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.1 



MARY ANDERSON 



THE STORY OF HER LIFE 



PROFESSIONAL CAREER 



BY 



J. M. FARRAR, M.A. 

Author of " Five Years in Minnesota," etc. 




NEW YORK: 

NORMAN L. MUNRO, PUBLISHER 

24 AND 26 VANDEWATER ST. 



rfftt* 



W> 



f* 



Entered according to Act of Co7igress, in the year 1885, by Nor- 
man L. Monro, m the office of the Librarian of 
Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



PREFACE. 



The writer of these pages feels some diffidence in pre- 
senting them to the public. They are a sketch — incom- 
plete as any such sketch must be — of an artist whose 
career, if her life be prolonged, can hardly be said to have 
more than begun. There is a charm too in Mary Ander- 
son, in her enthusiasm for her art, in her high and culti- 
vated intelligence, in her sweet and gracious womanliness, 
which are far more easily felt than described. Very few 
actresses — none, indeed, of other than English birth — 
have so endeared themselves to the English theater-going 
public. Rare, indeed, are the names of those who have 
inspired friendships so warm among some of the most 
gifted Englishmen and Englishwomen of their time. To 
have known Mary Anderson intimately is to have lived 
in the sunshine. To think of her is to be reminded of a 
line of the great poet of her native land: — 
I When she passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.' , 

J. M. F. 

LiOKDOtf. 

October, 1884. 



TO 

MRS. HAMILTON GRIFFIN 

IS INSCRIBED 
WITH SINCERE REGARD, 

THIS SKETCH 

OF 

HER DA UGHTER'S LIFE. 



MARY ANDERSON 



CHAPTER I. 

AT HO^IE. 

Lon"G Branch, one of America's most famous watering- 
places, in midsummer, its softly-wooded hills dotted here 
and there with picturesque " frame " villas of dazzling 
white, and below the purple Atlantic sweeping in rest- 
lessly on to the New Jersey shore. The sultry day has 
been one of summer storm, and the waves are tipped still 
with crests of snowy foam, though now the sun is sinking 
peacefully to rest amid banks of cloud, aflame with rose 
and violet and gold. 

About a mile back from the shore stands a rambling 
country house embosomed in a small park a few acres in 
extent, and immediately surrounding it masses of the 
magnificent shrub known as Hose of Sharon, in full bloom, 
in which the walls of snowy white, with their windows 
gleaming in the sunlight, seem set as in a bed of color. 
The air is full of perfume. The scent of flower and tree 
rises gratefully from the rain-laden earth. The birds 
make the air musical with song ; and here and there in 
the neighboring wood, the pretty brown squirrels spring 
from branch to branch, and dash down with their gambols 
the rain drops in a diamond spray. A broad veranda 
covered with luxuriant honeysuckle and clematis stretches 
along the eastern front of the house, and the wide bay 
window, thrown open just now to the summer wind, seems 
framed in flowers. As we approach nearer, the deep, 
rich notes of an organ strike upon the ear. Some one, 
with seeming unconsciousness, is producing a sweet 



10 MARY ANDERSON. 

passionate music, which changes momentarily with the 
player's passing mood. We pause an instant and look 
into the room. Here is a picture which might be called 
"a dream of fair women." Seated at the organ in the 
subdued light is a young woman of a strange, almost 
startling beauty. Her graceful figure clad in a simple 
black robe, unrelieved by a single ornament, is slight, 
and almost girlish, though there is a rounded fullness in 
its line** which betrays that womanhood has been reached. 
A small classic head carried with easy grace; finely chiseled 
features ; full, deep, gray eyes ; and crowning all a 
wealth of auburn hair, from which peeps, as she turns, a 
pink, shell-like ear ; these complete a picture which 
seems to belong to another clime and another age, and 
lives ha*rdly but on the canvas of Titian. We are almost 
sorry to enter the room and break the spell. Mary Ander- 
son's manner as she starts up from the organ with a light 
elastic spring to greet her visitors is singularly gracious 
and winning. There is a frank fearlessness in the 
beautiful speaking eyes so full of poetry and soul, a 
mingled tenderness and decision in the mouth, with an 
utter absence of that self -consciousness and coquetry 
which often mar the charm of even the most beautiful 
face. This is the artist's study to which she flies back 
gladly, now and then, for a few weeks' rest and relaxation 
from the exacting life of a strolling player, whose days 
are spent wandering in pursuit of her profession over the 
vast continent which stretches from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. Here she may be found often busy with her part 
when the faint rose begins to steal over the tree tops at 
early dawn; or sometimes when the world is asleep, and 
the only sounds are the wind, as it sighs mournfully 
through the neighboring wood, or the far-off murmur of 
the Atlantic waves as they dash sullenly upon the beach. 
On a still summer's night she will wander sometimes, a 
fair Eosalind, such as Shakespeare would have loved, in 
the neighboring grove, and wake its silent echoes as she 



MART ANDERSON. 11 

recites the Great Master's lines; or she will stand upon 
the flower-clad veranda, under the moonlight, her hair 
stirred softly by the summer wind, and it becomes to her 
the balcony from which Juliet murmurs the story of her 
love to a ghostly Borneo beneath. 

A large English deerhound, who was dozing at her 
feet when we entered the room, starts up with his mis- 
tress, and after a lazy stretch seems to ask to join in the 
welcome. Mary Anderson explains that tie is an old 
favorite, dear from his resemblance to a hound which 
figures in some of the portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. 
He has failed ignominiously in an attempted training for 
a dramatic career, and can do no more than howl a dole- 
ful and distracting accompaniment to his mistress' voice 
in singing. We glance round the room, and see that the 
walls are covered with portraits of eminent actors, living 
and dead, with here and there bookcases filled with 
favorite dramatic authors ; in a corner a bust of Shake- 
speare ; and on a velvet stand a stage dagger which oncfc 
belonged to Sarah Siddons. Over the mantelpiece is a 
huge elk's head, which fell to the rifle of General Crook, 
and was presented to Mary Anderson by that renowned 
American hunter ; and here, under a glass case, is a 
stuffed hawk, a deceased actor and former colleague. 
Dressed in appropriate costume he used to take the part 
of the Hawk in Sheridan Knowles' comedy of "Love/' 
m which Mary Anderson played the Countess. The 
story of this bird's training is as characteristic of her 
passion for stage realism as of that indomitable power of 
will to overcome obstacles, to which much of her success 
is due. She determined to have a live hawk for the 
part instead of the conventional stuffed one of the stage, 
and with some difficulty procured a half -wild bird from a 
menagerie. Arming herself with strong spectacles and 
heavy gauntlets, she spent many a weary day in the pain- 
ful process of " taming the shrev^. " After a long struggle, 
in which she came off sometimes torn and bleeding, the 



is mary Anderson. 

bird was taught to fly from the falconer's shoulder on to 

her outstretched finger and stay there while she recited 

the lines — 

" How nature fashioned him for his bold trade! 
Gave him his stars of eves to range abroad, 
His wings of glorious spread to mow the air 
And breast of might to use them!" 

and then, by tickling his feet, he would fly off and flap 
his wings appropriately, while she went on — 

"I delight 
To fly my hawk. The hawk's a glorious bird; 
Obedient — yet a daring, dauntless bird!" 

Here, too, are her guitar and zither, on both which instru- 
ments Mary Anderson is a proficient. 

And now that we have seen all her treasures, we must 
follow her to the top of the house, from which is obtained 
a fine view of the Atlantic as it races in mighty waves on 
to the beach at Long Branch. She declares that in 
the offing, among the snowy craft which dance at anchor 
there, can be distinguished her pretty steam yacht, the 
Galatea. 

Night is falling fast, but with that impulsiveness which 
is so characteristic of her, Mary Anderson insists upon 
our paying a visit to the stables to see her favorite mare, 
Maggie Logan. Poor Maggie is now blind with age, but 
in her palmy days she could carry her mistress, who is 
a splendid horsewoman, in a flight of five miles across the 
prairie in sixteen minutes. As we enter the box, Maggie 
turns her pretty head at sound of the familiar voice, and 
in response to - a gentle hint, her mistress produces a piece 
of sugar from her pocket. As Mary Anderson strokes 
the fine thoroughbred head, we think the pair are not 
very much unlike. Meanwhile, Maggie's stable com- 
panion cranes his beautiful neck over the side of the box, 
and begs for the caress which is not denied him. 

Night has fallen 1 now m earnest, and the beaming 
colored boy holds his lantern to guide us along the path, 
while Maggie whinnies after us her adieu. The grass- 



MARY ANDERSON. 13, 

hoppers chirp merrily in the sodden grass, and now and 
then a startled rabbit darts out of the wood and crosses 
close to our feet. The light is almost blinding as we 
enter the cheerful dining-room, where supper is laid on 
the snowy cloth, and are introduced to the charming 
family circle of the Long Branch villa. Though it is the 
home now of an old Southerner, Mary Anderson's step- 
father, it is a favorite trysting-place with Grant, the hero 
of the North, with Sherman, and many another famous 
man, between whom and the South there raged twenty 
years ago so deadly and prolonged a feud. While not 
actually a daughter of the South by birth, Mary Ander- 
son is such by early education and associations, and to 
these grim old soldiers she seems often the emblem of 
Peace, as they sit in the pretty drawing-room at Long 
Branch, and listen, sometimes with tear-dimmed eyes, to 
the sweet tones of her voice as she sings for them their 
favorite songs* 



CHAPTER II. 

BIRTH AND EDUCATION. 

Seldom has a more charming story been written than 
that of Mary Anderson's childhood and youth to the time 
when, a beautiful girl of sixteen, she made her debut in 
what has ever since remained her favorite role, Juliet; — 
and the only Juliet who has ever played the part at the 
same age since Fanny Kemble. 

There was nothing in her home surroundings to guide 
in the direction of a dramatic career; indeed her parents 
seemed to have entertained the not uncommon dread of 
the temptations and dangers of a stage life for their 
daughter, and only yielded at last before the earnest pas- 
sionate purpose to which so much of Mary Anderson's 
after success is due. They bent wisely at length before 
the mysterious power of genius which shone out in the 
beautiful child long before she was able fully to under- 



14 MARY ANDERSON. 

stand whither the resistless promptings to tread the 
" mimic stage of life " were leading her. In the end tha 
New World gained an actress of whom it may be weH 
proud, and the Old World has been fain to confess that 
it has no monopoly of the highest types of histrionic 
genius. 

Mary Anderson was born at Sacramento* on the Pacific 
slope, on the 28th of July, 1859, but removed with her 
parents to Kentucky, when but six months old. German 
and English blood are mingled in her veins, her mother 
being of German descent, while her father was the grand- 
son of an Englishman. On the outbreak of' the civil 
war he joined the ranks of the Southern armies, and fell 
fighting under the Confederate flag before Mobile. When 
but three years old Mary Anderson was left fatherless, 
and a year or two afterward she and her little brother 
Joseph found almost more than a father's love and care 
in her mother's second husband, Dr. Hamilton Griffin, 
an old Southern planter, who had abandoned his planta- 
tions at the outbreak of the war, and after a successful 
career as an army surgeon, established himself in practice 
at Louisville. 

Mary Anderson's early years were characteristic of her 
future. She was one of those children whose wild artist 
nature chafes under the restraints of home and school 
life. Generous to a fault, the life and soul of her com- 
panions, yet to control her taxed to their utmost the 
parental resources; and it must be admitted she was the 
torment of her teachers. Her wild exuberant spirits 
overleaped the bounds of school life, and sometimes made 
order and discipline difficult of enforcement. She was 
never known to tell an untruth, but at the same time she 
would never confess to a fault. Imprisoned often for 
punishment in a room, she would steadfastly refuse to 
admit that she had done wrong, and, maternal patience 
exhausted, the mutinous little culprit had commonly to 
be released impenitent and unconfessed. Indeed her wild- 



MARY ANDERSON. 15 

ness acquired for her the name of " Little Mustang;" as, 
later on, her fondness for poring over books beyond her 
childish years that of " Little Newspaper." At school, 
the confession must be made, she was refractory and idle. 
The prosaic routine of school life was dull and distasteful 
to the child, who, at ten years of age, found her highest 
delight in the plays of Shakespeare. Many of her school 
hours were spent in a corner, face to the wall, and with a 
book on her head, to restrain the mischievous habit of 
making faces at her companions, which used to convulse 
the school with ill-suppressed laughter. She would sally 
forth in the morning with her little satchel, fresh and 
neat as a daisy, to return at night witfr frock in rents, 
and all the buttons, if any way ornamental, given away 
in an impulsive generosity to her schoolmates. It soon 
became evident that she would learn little or nothing at 
school; and on a faithful promise to amend her ways if 
she might only leave and pursue her studies at home, 
Mary Anderson was permitted, when but thirteen years 
of age, to terminate her school career. But instead of 
studying "MagnaH's Questions," or becoming better ac- 
quainted with "The Use of the Globes," she spent most 
of her time in devouring the pages of Shakespeare, and 
committing favorite passages to memory. To her childish 
fancy they seemed to open the gates of dreamland, where 
she could hold converse with a world peopled by heroes, 
and live a life apart from the prosaic everyday existence 
which surrounded her in a modern American town. 
Shakespeare was the teacher who replaced the "school 
marm," with her dull and formal lessons. Her quick 
perceptive mind grasped his great and noble thoughts, 
which gave a vigor and robustness to her mental growth. 
Since those days she has assimilated rather than acquired 
knowledge, and there are now few women of her age 
whose information is more varied, or whose conversation 
displays greater mental culture, and higher intellectual 
development. Strangely enough, it was the male char- 



16 MARY ANDERSON. 

acters of Shakespeare which touched Mary Anderson's 
youthful fancy; and she studied with a passionate ardor 
such parts as Hamlet, Romeo, and Richard III. With 
the wonderful intuition of an art-nature, she seems to 
have felt that the cultivation of the voice was a first essen- 
tial to success. She ransacked her father's library for 
works on elocution, and discovering on one occasion; 
"Rush on the Voice," proceeded, for many weeks before 
it became known to her parents, to commence under its 
guidance the task of building up a somewhat weak and 
ineffective organ into a voice capable of expressing with 
ease the whole gamut of feeling from the fiercest passion 
to the tenderest sentiment, and which can fill with a 
whisper the largest theater. 

The passion for a theatrical career seems to have been 
born in the child. At ten she would recite passages from 
Shakespeare, and arrange her room to represent appro 
pnately the stage scene. Her first visit to the theater 
was when she was about twelve, one winter's evening, to 
see a fairy piece called " Puck/' The house was only a 
short distance from her home at Louisville, and she and 
her little brother presented themselves at the entrance 
door hours before the time announced for the perform- 
ance. The door-keeper happened to observe the children, 
and thinking they would freeze standing outside in the 
wintry wind, good natu redly opened the door and ad- 
mitted Mary Anderson to Paradise — or what seemed like 
it to her — the empty benches of the dress circle, the 
dim half-light, the mysterious horizon of dull green cur- 
tain, beyond which lay Fairyland. Here for two or three 
hours she sat entranced, till the peanut boy made his ap- 
pearance to herald the approach of the glories of the 
evening. From that date the die of Mary Anderson's 
destiny was cast. The theater became her world. She 
looked with admiring interest on a super, or even a bill- 
sticker, as they passed the windows of her father's house; 
and an actor seen in the streets in the flesh filled her with 



MARY ANDERSON. 17 

the same reverent awe and admiration as though the gods 
had descended from their serene heights to mmgle in the 
dust with common mortals. We are not sure that she 
still retains this among the other illusions of her youth! 

The person who seems to have fixed Mary Anderson's 
theatrical destiny was one Henry Woude. He had been 
an actor of some distinction on the American stage, which 
he had, however, abandoned for the pulpit. Mr. Woude 
happened to be one of her father's patients, and the con- 
versation turning one day upon Mary's passion for a theat- 
rical career, the older actor expressed a wish to hear her 
read. He was enthusiastic in praise of the power and 
promise displayed by, the self-trained girl, and declared to 
the astonished father that in his youthful daughter he 
possessed a second Rachel. Mr. Woude advised an imme- 
diate training for a dramatic career; but the parental 
repugnance to the stage, was not yet overcome, and Mary 
remained a while longer to pursue, as best she might, her 
dramatic studies in her own home, and with no other 
teachers than the artistic instinct which had already 
guided her so far on the path to eventual triumph and 
success. 

When in her fourteenth year, Mary .Anderson saw for 
the first time a really great actor. Edwin Booth came on 
a starring tour to Louisville, and she witnessed his 
Richard III., one of the actor's most powerful imper- 
sonations. That night was anew revelation to her in 
dramatic art, and- she returned home to lie awake for 
hours, sleepless from excitement, and pondering whether 
it were possible that she could ever wield the same magic 
powei. She commenced at once the serious study of 
"Richard III." The manner of Booth was carefully 
copied, and that great artist would doubtless have been as 
much amused as flattered to note the servility with which 
his rendering of the part was adhered to. A preliminary 
rehearsal took place in the kitchen before a little colored 
girl, some years Mary Anderson's senior, who had that 



18 MARY ANDERSON. 

devoted attachment to her young mistress often found in 
the colored races to the whites. Dinah was so much terri- 
fied by the fierce declamation that she almost went into 
hysterics, and rushing up-stairs begged the mother to come 
down and see what was the matter with " Miss Mami/'as. 
she was affectionately called at home. Consent was at 
length obtained to a little drawing-room entertainment at 
home of "Richard III.," with Miss Mary Anderson for 
the first and last time in the title role. For some months 
the young debutante had carefully saved her pocket money 
for the purchase of an appropriate costume, and, resisting, 
as best she might, the attractions of the sweetmeat shop, 
managed to accumulate five dollars. With her mother's 
help a little costume was got up— a purple satin tunic, 
green silk cape, and plumed hat — and wearing the tradi- 
tional hump, the youthful representative of Richard 
appeared for the first time before an audience in the Tent 
Scene, preceded by the Cottage Scene from "The Lady 
of Lyons." The back drawing-room was arranged as a 
stage; her mother acting as prompter, though her help 
was little needed; and, judged by the enthusiastic applause 
of friends and neighbors, the performance was a great 
success. The young actress received it all with even more 
apparent coolness than if she had trodden the boards for 
years, and made her gxits with the calm dignity which she 
had observed to be Edwin Booth's manner under similar 
circumstances. Indeed, Booth became to her childish 
fancy the divinity who could open to her the door of the 
stage she longed so ardently to reach. She confided to 
the little colored girl a plan to save their money, and fly 
to New York to Mr. Booth, and ask him to place her on 
the stage. Dinah entered heartily into the affair, and at 
one time they had managed to hoard as much as five 
dollars for the carrying out of this romantic scheme. 
Some years afterward when the wish of her heart had been 
long accomplished, Mary Anderson made Mr. Booth's 
acquaintance, and recounting to him her childish fancy 



MARY ANDERSON. 19 

asked what he would have done if she had succeeded in 
presenting herself to him in New York. " Why, my 
child, I should have taken you down to the depot, bought 
a couple of tickets for Louisville, and given you in charge 
of the conductor, " was the rather discouraging answer of 
the great tragedian. 

Not long afterward Mary Anderson's dramatic powers 
were submitted to the critical judgment of Miss Cush- 
man. That great actress, then in the zenith of her fame, 
was residing not far distant at Cincinnati. Accompanied 
by her mother, Mary presented herself at Miss Cushman's 
hotel. They happened to meet in the vestibule. The 
veteran actress took the young aspirant's hand with her 
accustomed vigorous grasp, to which Mary, not to be out- 
done, nerved herself to respond in kind; and patting her 
at the same time affectionately on the cheek, invited her 
to read before her on an early morning. When Miss 
Cushman had entered her* waiting carriage, Mary Ander- 
son, with her wonted veneration for what pertained to 
the stage, begged that she might be allowed to be the 
first to sit in the chair that had been occupied for a few 
moments by the great actress. Miss Cushman's verdict 
was highly favorable. " You have/' she said, " three 
essential requisites for the stage: voice, personality, and 
gesture. With a year's longer study and some training, 
you may venture to make an appearance before the pub- 
lic." Miss Cushman recommended that she should take 
lessons from the younger Vandenhoff, who was at the 
time a successful dramatic teacher m New York. A 
year from that date occurred the actress' lamented death, 
almost on the very day of Mary Anderson's debut. 

Returning home thus encouraged, her dramatic studies 
were resumed with fresh ardor. The question of the 
New York project was anxiously debated in the family 
councils. It was at length decided that Mary Anderson 
should receive some regular training for the stage; and 
accompanied by her mother she was soon afterward on 



20 MARY ANDERSON. 

her way to the Empire City, full of happiness and pride 
that the dream of her life seemed now within reach of 
attainment. Vandenhoff was paid a hundred dollars for 
ten lessons, and taught his pupil mainly the necessary 
stage business. This was, strictly speaking. Mary An- 
derson's only professional training for a dramatic career. 
The stories which have been current since her appearance 
in London, as to her having been a pupil of Cushman, or 
of other distinguished American artists, are entirely apoc- 
ryphal, and have been evolved by the critics who have 
given them to the world out of that fertile soil, their own 
inner consciousness. There is certainly no circumstance 
in her career which reflects more credit on Mary Ander- 
son than that her success, and the high position as an 
artist she has won thus early in life, are due to her own 
almost unaided efforts. Well may it be said of her — 

" What merit to be dropped on fortune's hill ? 
The honor is to mount it." 



CHAPTER III. 

EARLY YEARS 0:N" THE STAGE. 

Between eight and nine years ago, Mary Anderson 
made her debut at Louisville, in the home of her child- 
hood, and before an audience, many of whom had known 
her from a child. This was how it came about. The 
saason had not been very successful at Macaulay's Theater, 
and one Milnes Levick, an English stock-actor of the 
company, happened to be in some pecuniary difficulties, 
and in need of funds to leave the town. The manager 
bethought him of Mary Anderson, and conceived the bold 
idea of producing " Romeo and Juliet," with the untried 
young novice in the role of Juliet for poor Levick's benefit. 
It was on a Thursday that the proposition was made to 
her by the manager at the theater, and the performance 
was to take place on the following Saturday. Mary, 
almost wild with delight, gave an eager acceptance if she 



MARY ANDERS OX. 21 

could but obtain her parents' consent, The passers-by 
turned many of them that day to look at the beautiful 
girl, who flew almost panting through the streets to reach 
her home. The bell handle actually broke in her impetu- 
ous eager hands. The answer was " Yes/' and at length 
the dream of her life was realized. On the following 
Saturday, the 27th of November, 1875, after only a single 
rehearsal, and wearing the borrowed costume of the man- 
ager's wife, who happened to be about the same size as 
herself, and without the slightest "make up," Mary An- 
derson appeared as one of Shakespeare's favorite heroines. 
She was announced in the playbills thus: — 

JULIET . . By a Louisville Young Lady. 
(Her first appearance on any stage,) 

The theater was packed from curiosity, and this is what 
the Louisville Courier said of the performance next 
morning. 

Louisville Courier, November 28th, 1875. 

" We can scarcely bring ourselves to speak of the young 
actress, w r ho came before the footlights last night, with 
the coolness of a critic and a spectator. An interest in 
native genius and young endeavor, in courage and brave 
effort that arrives from so near us — our own city— pre- 
cludes the possibility of standing outside of sympathy, and 
peering in with analyzing and judicial glance. But we 
Bo not think that any man of judgment who witnessed 
Miss Anderson's acting of Juliet, can doubt that she is a 
great actress. In the latter scenes she interpreted the 
very spirit and soul of tragedy, and thrilled the whole 
house into silence by the depth of her passion and her 
power. She is essentially a tragic genius, and began 
really to act only after the scene in which her nurse tells 
Juliet of what she supposes is her lover's death. The 
quick gasp, the terrified stricken face, the tottering step, 
the pasc onate and heart-rending accents were nature's 
owi'i marks of affecting overwhelming grief. Miss And- 



22 MARY ANDERSON. 

derson has great power over the lower tones of her rich 
voice. Her whisper electrifies and penetrates; her hurried 
words in the passion of the scene, where she drinks the 
sleeping potion, and afterward in the catastrophe at the 
end, although very far below conversational pitch, came 
to the ear with distinctness and with wonderful effect. 
In the final scene she reached the climax of her acting, 
which, from the time of Tybalt's death to the end, was 
full of tragic power that we have never seen excelled. It 
will be observed that we have placed the merit of this 
actress (in our opinion) for the most part in her deeper 
and more somber powers, and despite the high praise that 
we more gladly offer as her due, we cannot be blind to 
her faults in the presentation of last evening. She is, 
undoubtedly, a great actress, and last night evidenced a 
magnificent genius, more especially remarkable on ac- 
count of her extreme youth; but whether she is a great 
Juliet is, indeed, more doubtful. We can imagine her as 
personating Lady Macbeth superbly, and hope soon to 
witness her in the part. As Juliet, her conception is al- 
most perfect, as evinced by her rare and exceptional taste 
and intuitive understanding of the text. But her enact- 
ment of the earlier scenes lacks the exuberance and ear- 
nest joyfulness of the pure and glowing Flower of Italy, 
with all her fanciful conceits and delightful and loving 
ardor. 

" We could not, in Miss Anderson's rendition of the 
balcony scene, help feeling in the tones of her voice, an 
almost stern foreboding of their saddening fates — a fore- 
boding stranger than that which falls as a shadow to all 
ecstatic youthful hope and joy. Other faults — as evident, 
undoubtedly, to her and to her advisers, as to us — are for 
the most part superficial, and will disappear in a little 
further experience. A first appearance, coupled with so 
much merit and youth, may well excuse many things. 

" A lack of true interpretation we can never excuse. 
We give mediocrity fair common- place words, generally 



MARY ANDERSON. 23 

of commendation unaccompanied by censure. But when 
we come to deal with a divine inspiration, our words must 
have their full meaning. 

" We do not here want mere commendatory phrases, 
whose stereotyped faces appear again and again. We 
want just appreciation, just censure. Thus our criticism 
is not to be considered unkind. Nay, we not only owe it 
to the truth and to ourselves in Miss Anderson's case, to 
state the existence of faults and crudities in her acting, 
but we owe it to her, for it is the greatest kindness, and 
yet we do not speak harshly and are glad to admit that 
most of her faults— such for instance as frequently cast- 
ing up the eyes — are not only slight in themselves, but en- 
hanced if not caused by the timidity natural on such an 
occasion. 

" But enough of faults. We know something of the 
quality of our home actress. We see with but little 
further training and experience she will stand among the 
foremost actresses on the stage. We are charmed by her 
beauty and commanding power, and are justified in pre- 
dicting great future success/' 

In the following February Mary Anderson appeared 
again at Macaulay's Theater for a week, when she played, 
with success, Bianca in "Phasio," studied by the advice 
of the manager, who thought she had a vocation for 
heavy tragedy; also Julia in "The Hunchback/' Evadne, 
and again Juliet. 

The reputation of the rising young actress began to 
spread now beyond the bounds of her Kentucky home, 
and on the 6th of March, 1876, she commenced a week's 
engagement at the Opera House in St. Louis. Old Ben 
de Bar, the great Falstaff of his time, was manager of 
this theater. He had known all the most eminent Amer- 
ican actors, and had been manager for many of the stars; 
and he was quick to discern the brilliant future which 
awaited the young actress. The St. Louis engagement 
was not altogether successful, though it was brightened 



24 MARY ANDERSON. 

by the praises of General Sherman, with whom was 
formed then a friendship which remains unbroken till 
to-day. Indeed, the old veteran can never pass Long 
Branch in his travels without " stopping off to see Mary." 
Ben de Bar had a theater in New Orleans known- as the 
St. Charles. It was the Drury Lane of that city, and 
situated in an unfashionable quarter of the town. Its 
benches were reported to be almost deserted and its 
treasury nearly empty. But an engagement to appear 
there for a week was accepted joyfully by Mary Ander- 
son. She played Evadne at a parting matinee in St. 
Louis on the Saturday, traveled to New Orleans all 
through Sunday, arriving there at two o'clock on the 
Monday afternoon, rushed down to the theater to rehearse 
with a new company, and that night appeared to a house 
of only forty-eight dollars! The students of the Military 
College formed a large part of the scanty audience, and 
fired with the beauty and talent of the young actress, 
they sallied forth between the acts and bought up all the 
bouquets in the quarter. The final act of "Evadne" 
was played almost knee-deep in flowers, and that night 
Mary Anderson was compelled to hire a wagon to carry 
home to her hotel the floral offerings of her martial ad- 
mirers. General and Mrs. Tom Thumb occupied the 
stage box on one of the early nights of the engagement, 
and the fame of the beautiful young star soon reached 
the fashionable quarter of New Orleans, and Upper Ten- 
dom flocked to the despised St. Charles. On the follow 
ing Saturday night there was a house packed from floor 
to ceiling, the takings, meanwhile, having risen from 48 
to 500 dollars. An offer of an engagement at the Vari- 
etes, the Lyceum of New Orleans, quickly followed, and 
the daring feat of appearing as Meg Merrilies was at- 
tempted on its boards. The press predicted failure, and 
warned the young aspirant against essaying a part al- 
most identified with Cushman, then but lately de- 
ceased, who had been a great favorite with the New 



MARY ANDERSON. 25 

Orleans public, and one of whose best impersonations 
it was. The actors too, with whom Mary Ander- 
son rehearsed, looked forward to anything but a suc- 
cess. Nothing daunted, however, and confident in 
her own powers, she spent two hours in perfecting 
a make-up so successful, that even her mother failed 
to recognize her in the strange, w r eird disguise; and 
then, darkening her dressing-room, set herself resolutely 
to get into the heart of her part. Mary Anderson's Meg 
Merrilies was an immense success; Cushman herself never 
received greater applause, and the scene was quite an ova- 
tion. Hearing, on the fall of the curtain, that General 
Beauregard, one of the heroes of the civil war, intended 
to make a presentation, she threw off her disguise, and 
smoothing her hair rushed back to the stage, to receive 
the Badge of the Washington Artillery, a belt enameled 
in blue, with crossed cannons in gold with diamond 
vents, and suspended from the belt a tiger's head 
in gold, with diamond eyes and ruby tongue. The 
corps had been known through the war as the 
"Tiger Heads," and were famed for their deeds of dar- 
ingand bravery. The belt bore the inscription, "To 
Mary Anderson, from her friends of the Battalion." She 
returned thanks in a little speech, which was received 
with much enthusiasm, and retired almost overcome with 
pleasure and pride. The youthful actress, who had then 
not completed her seventeenth year, took by storm the 
hearts of the impulsive and chivalrous Southerners. On 
the morning of her departure, she found to her astonish- 
ment that the railway company had placed a fine " Pull- 
man" and special engine at her disposal all the way to 
Louisville. Generals Beauregard and Hood, with many 
distinguished Southerners, were on the platform to bid 
her farewell, and she returned home with purse and repu- 
tation both marvelously grown. 

After a brief period spent in diligent study, Mary 
Anderson fulfilled a second engagement in New Orleans, 



26 MARY ANDERSON. 

which proved a great financial success. The criticisms 
of this period all admit her histrionic power, though some 
describe her efforts as at times raw and crude, faults hardly 
to be wondered at in a young girl mainly self-taught, and 
with barely a year's experience of the business of the 
stage. 

About this time Mary Anderson met with the first 
serious rebuff in her hitherto so successful career. It 
happened, too, in California, the State of her birth, where 
she was to have a somewhat rude experience of the old 
adage, that " a prophet has no honor in his own country." 
John McCullough was then managing with great success 
the principal theater in San Francisco, and offered her a 
two weeks' engagement. But California would have none 
of her. The public were cold and unsympathetic, the 
press actually hostile. The critics declared not only that 
she could not act, but that she was devoid of all capability 
of improvement. One, more gallant than his fellows, was 
gracious enough to remark that, in spite of her mean 
capacity as an artist, she possessed a neck like a column 
of marble. It was only when she appeared as Meg Merri- 
lies that the Californians thawed a little, and the press 
relented somewhat. Edwin Booth happened to be in 
San Francisco at the time, and it was on the stage of 
California that Mary Anderson first met the distinguished 
actor who had been her early stage ideal. He told her 
that for ten years he had never sat through a performance 
till hers; and the praises of the great tragedian went far 
to console her for the coldness and want of sympathy in the 
general public. It was by Booth's advice, as well as John 
McCullough's, that she now began to study such parts 
as Parthenia, as better suited to her powers than more 
somber tragedy. Those were the old stock-theater days 
in America, when every theater had a fair standing com- 
pany, and relied for its success on the judicious selection 
of stars. This system, though perhaps a somewhat vicious 
one, made so many engagements possible to Mary Ander- 



MARY ANDERSON. 27 

son, whose means would not have admitted of the costlier 
system of traveling with a special company. 

The return journey from California was made painfully 
memorable by a disastrous accident to a railway train 
which had preceded the party, and they were compelled 
to stop for the night at a little roadside town in Missouri. 
The hotels were full of wounded passengers, and scenes 
of distress were visible on all sides. When they were 
almost despairing of a night's lodging, a plain country- 
man approached them, and offered the hospitality of his 
pretty white cottage hard by, embosomed in its trees and 
flowers. The offer was thankfully accepted, and soon 
after their arrival the wife's sister, a '• school marm," 
came in, and seemed to warm at once to her beautiful 
young visitor. She proposed a walk, and the two girls 
sallied forth into the fields. The stranger turned the 
subject to Shakespeare and the stage, with which Mary 
Anderson was fain to confess but a very slight acquaint- 
ance, fearing the announcement of her profession would 
shock the prejudices of these simple country folk, who 
might shrink from having "a play actress" under their 
roof. Some months after the party had returned home 
there came a letter from these kind people saying how, 
to their delight and astonishment, they had accidentally 
discovered who had been their guest. It seemed the 
sister was an enthusiastic Shakespearean student, and all 
agreed that in entertaining Mary Anderson they had 
"entertained an angel unawares." 

The California trip may be said to close the first period 
of Mary Anderson's dramatic career. With some draw- 
backs and some rebuffs she had made a great success, but 
she was known thus far only as a Western girl, who had 
yet to encounter the judgment of the more critical aud- 
iences of the South and East, as years later, with a 
reputation second to none all over the States as well as in 
Canada, she essayed, with a success which has been seldom 
equaled, perhaps neve^ surpassed, the ordeal of facing, 



28 MARY ANDERSON. 

at the Lyceum, an audience, perhaps the most fastidious 
and critical in London. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE CAREEK OF AN AMERICAN STAR. 

Mary Anderson returned home from California dis- 
heartened and dispirited. To her it had proved anything 
but a Golden State. Her visit there was the first serious 
rebuff in her brief dramatic career whose opening months 
had been so full of promise, and even of triumph. She 
was barely seventeen,, and a spirit less brave/ or less con- 
fident in its own powers, might easily have succumbed 
beneath the storm of adverse criticism. Happily for 
herself, and happily too for the stage on both sides of the 
Atlantic, the young debutante took the lesson wisely to 
heart. She saw that the heights of dramatic fame could 
not be taken by storm; that her past successes, if brill- 
iant, regard being had to her youth and want of training, 
were far from secure. She was like some fair flower which 
had sprung up warmed by the genial sunshine, likely 
enough to wither and die before the first keen blast. Her 
youth, her beauty, her undoubted dramatic genius, were 
points strongly in her favor; but these could ill counter- 
balance, at first at any rate, the want of systematic train- 
ing, the almost total absence of any experience of the 
representation by others of the parts which she sought to 
make her own. She had seen Charlotte Cushman, indeed, 
in " Meg Merrilies/'but of the true rendering of a part so 
difficult and complex as Shakespeare's Juliet, she knew 
absolutely nothing but what she had been taught by the 
promptings of her own artistic instinct. She was herself 
the only Juliet, as she was the only Bianca, and 
the only Evadne, she had ever seen upon any stage, hi 
those days she had, perhaps, never heard the remark of 
Mademoiselle Mars, who was the most charming of Juliets 



MARY AKDEBSOX. 29 

at sixty. " Si f avals ma jeunesse, je n'aurais pas mon 
talent.' 3 

Coming back then to her Kentucky home from the ill- 
starred Californian trip, Mary Anderson seems to have 
determined to essay again the lowest steps of the ladder 
of fame. She took a summer engagement with a com- 
pany, which was little else than a band of strolling play- 
ers. The repertoire was of the usual ambitious character, 
and Mary was able to assume once more her favorite role 
of Juliet. The company was deficient in a Eomeo, and 
the part was consequently undertaken by a lady — a role 
by the way in which Cushman achieved one of h£r great- 
est triumphs. In spite, however, of the young star, the 
little band played to sadly empty houses, and the treasury 
was so depleted that, in the generosity of her heart, Mary 
Anderson proposed to organize a benefit matinee, and play 
Juliet. She went down to the theater at the appointed hour 
and dressed for her part. After some delay a man 
strayed into the pit, then a couple of boys peeped over 
the rails of the gallery, and, at last, a lady entered 
, the dress-circle. The disheartened manager was com- 
pelled at length to appear before the curtain and 
announce that, in consequence of the want of public 
support, the performance could not take place. That day 
Mary Anderson walked home to her hotel through the 
quiet streets of the little Kentucky town — which shall be 
nameless — with a sort of miserable feeling at her heart, 
that the world had no soul for the great creations of 
Shakespeare's master-mind, which had so entranced her 
youthful fancy. It all seemed like a descent into some 
chill valley of darkness, after the sweet incense of praise, 
the perfume of flowers, and the crowded theaters which 
had been her earlier experiences. But the dark storm 
cloud was soon to pass over, and henceforth almost un- 
broken sunshine was to attend Mary Anderson's career. 
For her there was to be no heart-breaking period of mean 
obscurity, no years of dull unrequited toil She burst as 



SO MARY ANDERSON. 

a star upon the theatrical world, and a star she has re- 
mained to this day, because, through all her successes, 
she never for a moment lost sight of the fact that she 
could only maintain her ground by patient study, and 
steady persistent hard work. Failures she had unques- 
tionably. Her rendering of a part was often rough, often 
unfinished. Not uncommonly she was surpassed in knowl- 
edge of stage business by the most obscure member of the 
companies with whom she played ; but the public recog- 
nized instinctively the true light of genius which shone 
clear and bright through all defects and all shortcomings. 
It was a rare experience, whether on the stage, or in 
other paths of art, but not an unknown one. Fanny 
Kemble, who made her debut at Covent Garden at the 
same age as Mary Anderson, took the town by storm at 
once, and seemed to burst upon the stage as a finished 
actress. David Garrick was the greatest actor in Eng- 
land after he had been on the boards less than three 
months. Shelley was little more than sixteen when he 
wrote " Queen Mab;" and Beckford's " Vathek" was the 
production of a youth of barely twenty. 

In the year 1876, Mary Anderson received an offer from 
a distinguished theatrical manager, John T. Ford, of 
Washington and Baltimore, to join his company as a star, 
but at an ordinary salary. Three hundred dollars a 
week, even in those early days, was small pay for the 
rising young actress, who was already without a rival in 
her own line on the American stage; but the extended 
tour through the States which the engagement offered, 
the security of a good company, and of able management, 
led to an immediate acceptance. On this as on every 
other occasion, through her theatrical career, Mary An- 
derson was accompanied by her father and mother, who 
have ever watched over her welfare with the tenderest 
solicitude. All the arrangements for the trip were en 
prince. Indeed we have small idea in our little sea-girt 
isle, of the luxury and even splendor with which Ameri- 



MARY ANDERSON. 31 

can stars travel over the vast distances between one city 
and another on the immense Western continent. The 
City of Worcester, a new Pullman car, subsequently 
used by Sarah Bernhardt, and afterward by Edwin Booth, 
was chartered for the party, consisting of Mary Ander- 
son, her father, mother, and brother, and the young ac- 
tress' maid and secretary. A cook and three colored por- 
ters constituted the personnel of the establishment. 
there was a completely equipped kitchen, a dining-room 
ommodious family table; a tiny drawing-room with 
no, portraits of favorite artists, and some choicely- 
)ookshelves, as well as capital sleeping quarters. It 
fcerally a splendid home upon wheels. Where the 
happened to be inferior at any particular town, the 
party occupied it through the period of the engagement. 
Visitors were received, friendly parties arranged, and lit- 
tle of the inconvenience and discomfort of travel experi- 
enced. It was thus that Mary Anderson made her first 
great thea f ^ r 1 gh the States. In spite of now 

Kad - 1 ijtile press, her progress was 

y places she created an ab- 
turned away at the theater 
uncommon occurrence for an 
.rtised price was seventy-five cents 
,mium as twenty-five dollars. The 
^od a rich harvest, and Mary Anderson 
. A iis Southern trip to more money than any 
Us actor, excepting only Edwin Forrest. There 
. cts still one drop of bitter in this cup of sweetness and 
success. The company, jealous of the prominence given 
to one whom they regarded as a mere untried girl, pro- 
ceeded to add what they could to her difficulties by " boy- 
There were t^o exceptions among the 
rs; and we are pleased to be able to record 
ese was an Englishman. The ladies were 
. .oclaiming a war to the knife! 
say the impassioned youth of the New 



32 MARY ANDERSON. 

World now and then pursued the wandering star in her 
travels at immense expenditure of time and money, as 
well as of floral decorations. This is young America's 
way of showing his admiration for a favorite actress. He 
is silent and unobtrusive. He makes his presence known 
by the midnight so* nade beneath her windows; by the 
bouquets which fall at her feet on every representation, 
and are sent to the room of her hot J at the same hour 
each day; by his constant attendance on the cfef ' ure 
platform at the railway station. We are not sure 
this silent worship which so often persistently Linlx,*. 
her path was displeasing to Mary Anderson. It touches 
if not her heart, yet that poetic vein which runs through 
her nature, and reminded her sometimes' M 
pursuit with which Evangeline followed :.' 
lover. 

Manager Ford had taken Mary Anderson thro u^i the 
South with great profit to himself. In this she had had 
no direct pecuniary interest b^^nd her ixn,. 
She had, of course, greatly eL lier repletion i'l . 

her purse. She had become i h e i n her parte,; and 

even added to her repertoire, tkv, manager's daughter, 
with whom she played Juliet and La% Macbeth alter- 
nately, having translated for her " La Fill . • ^ 
which she has since appeared with great ai^'*^ §^ 
was then but seventeen and a half, and had never- ^os 
sessed a diamond- *** ,r i on returning home from churc 
one Sunday morim^, she foiind ) ^'ewel case con- 

taining a m; "^cent diamoii toss, ^ acknowledg- 
ment from the manager of her ^^..^.^ ipany. 
The gift was the more appreciated from the fact that ; t 
was a very exceptional specimen of mana^-ai g -< yit 
in America! 

The criticisms of V_ \ j^ess d^ .g the early yea ; rs o 
Mary Anderson's theatrical carov! ' — e full of interest 
viewed in the light of her after and firmly establish*. 



MARY ANDERSON. 33 

success. They show that the American people were not 
slow to recognize the genius of the young girl, who was 
destined hereafter to spread a luster on the stage of two 
continents. At the same time they are full either of a 
ridiculous praise which is blind to the presence of the 
least fault, and would have turned, the head of a young 
girl not endowed with the sturdy common sense possessed 
by Mary Anderson;. or they are marked by a vindictive 
animosity which defeats its very object, and practically 
attracts r public notice in favor of an actress it is obviously 
meant t$ cjrush. These newspaper criticisms are further 
amusing as showing the family likeness which exists be- 
tween the genus "dramatic critic" on both sides of the 
Ifelantic. Each seems to believe that he carries the fate 
of the acu* " his inkhorn. Each seems blind to the 
fact th? - popuh vox Dei; that favorable criticism 
never, ve* made an artist, who had not within him the 
power to win the popular favor: still more, that adverse 
criticism c°^' never extinguish the heaven-sent spark of 
true artistic Svp. 

' ir f 

The verdict of Lov' , on its home-grown actress has 

been given in a preueumg chapter. The estimate, how- 

of strangers is of far more value than that of friends 

quaint -ljk. 3j The judgment of St. Louis, where 

Mary Andersun played her earliest engagements away 

frop" 1 „ome is, on the whole, the most interesting dramatic 

ism of her early performances record. St. Louis 

is a city of consid^ " lr culture, pIuN ,?1ds in much the 

same relation uu >outb_ as does r modern rival 

Chicago to_ ; vest. Its newspapers are some 

of the ablest on the continent, and its audiences perhaps 

as critical as any in America if we except perhaps such 

places as Bostc^ or New York. 

The St. Louis Globe Democr"* a.Ts:— 

" A diamond in the rough, but yet a diamond, was the 
mental verdict of ifc_ "jury who sat in the Opera House 

■^ight to Mary Anderson on her" first appear 



34 MARY ANDERSON. 

ance here in the character of Juliet. It was in reality 
her debut upon the stage. She played,, a short time since, 
for one week in her native city, Louisville, but this is her 
first effort upon a stage away from the associations which 
surround an appearance among friends, and which must, 
to a great extent, influence the general judgment of the 

debutante's merit We believe her to be the 

most promising young actress who has stepped upon the 
boards for many a day, and before whom there is, un- 
doubtedly, a brilliant and successful career/' 

The St. Louis Republican has the following very inter- 
esting notice: — 

" A fresh and beautiful young girl of Juliet's age em- 
bodied and presented Juliet. Beauty often mirrors its 
type in this beautiful character, but very rarely does 
Juliet's youth meet its youthful counterpart on the stage. 

A great Juliet is not the question here, but 

the possibility of a Juliet near the age at which the 
dramatist presented his heroine. Mary Anderson is un- 
tampered by any stage traditions, and she rendered 
Shakespeare's youngest heroine as she felt her pulsing in 

his lines She leads a return to the source of 

poetic inspiration, and exemplifies what true artistic 
instincts and feeling can do on the stage, without either 
the traditions and experience of acting. She colors her 
own conceptions and figure of Juliet, and by her work 
vindicates the master, and proves that Juliet can be pre- 
sented by a girl of her own age The fourth 

act exhibited great tragic power, and no want was felt in 
the celebrated chamber scene, which is the test passage of 

this role It stamped the performance as a 

success, and the actress as a phenomenon The 

thought must have gone round the house among those 
who knew the facts — Can this be only the seventh per- 
formance on the stage of this young girl ? " 

Here is another notice a few months later on in Mary 
Anderson's dramatic career from the Baltimore Gazette :~ 



MARY ANDERSON. 85 

" Miss Anderson's Juliet has the charm which belongs 
to youth, beauty, and natural genius. Her fair face, her 
flexible youth — for she is still in her teens — and her great 
natural dramatic genius, make her personation of that 
sweet creation of Shakespeare successful, in spite of her 
immaturity as an artist. We have so often seen aged 
Juliets; stiff, stagey Juliets; fat, roomy Juliets; and ill- 
featured Juliets, that the sight of a young, lady-like girl 
with natural dramatic genius, a bright face, an unworn 
voice, is truly refreshing. In the scene where the nurse 
brings her the bad news of Tybalt's death and Romeo's 
banishment, she acted charmingly. In gesture, attitude, 
and facial expression she gave evidence of emotion so true 
and strong, as showed she was capable of losing her own 
identity in the role." 

As an amusing specimen of vindictive criticism, we 

subjoin a notice in the Washington Capitol, under date 
May 28, 1876. This lengthy notice contains strong in- 
ternal evidence of a deadly feud existing between Manager 
Ford and the editor of the Capitol, and the stab is given 
through the fair bosom of Mary Anderson, whose immense 
success in Senatorial Washington, this atrabilious knight 
of the plume devotes two columns of his valuable space to 
explaining away. 

Washington City Daily Capitol, 28th May, 1876. 
" Miss Anderson comes to us on a perfect whirlwind of 
newspaper puffs. We use the words advisedly, for in none 
of them can be found a paragraph of criticism. If Sid- 
dons or Cushman had been materialized and restored to 
the stage in all their pristine excellence, the excitement 
in Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis and New Orleans, 
could not have been more intense. The very firemen of 
one of those cities seem to have been aroused and lost 
their hearts, if not their heads; and not only serenaded, 
the object of their adoration, but got up a decoration for 
her to wear of the most costly and gorgeous sort. Under 
this state of facts we waited with unusual impatience for 



38 MARY ANDERSON. 

the sixteen sticks to give the cue that was to fetch on the 
Juliet. It came at last, and Juliet stalked in. Had Lady 
Macbeth responded to the summons we could not have 
been more amazed. Miss Anderson is heroic in size and 
manner. The lovely heiress to the house of the Capulets, 
on the turn of sixteen, swept in upon the stage as if she 
were mistress of the house, situation, and of fate, and 
bent on bringing the enemy to terms. Her face is sweet, 
at times positively beautiful, but incapable of expression. 
Her voice, while clear, is hard, metallic, at intervals nasal, 
and all the while stagey. She has been trained in the old 
Kemble tragic pump-handle style of elocution, that runs 
talk on stilts. Her manner is crude and awkward. In 
the balcony scene she only needed a pair of gold rimmed 
glasses to have made her an excellent schoolmistress, 
chiding a naughty young man for intruding upon the 
sacred premises of Madame Fevialli's select academy for 
young ladies. In the love scenes that followed she was 
cold enough to be broken to pieces for a refrigerator. But 
who could have warmed up to such a Eomeo ? That 
unpleasant youth pained us with his quite unnecessary 
gyrations and spasmodic noise. We soon discovered that 
Miss Anderson had been coached for Juliet without pos- 
sessing on her part the most distant conception of the 
character — -or capacity to render it, had she the informa- 
tion. She was not doing Juliet from end to end. She 
was as far from Juliet as the North Pole is from the 
Equator. She was doing something else. We could not 
make out clearly what that character was; but it was 
something quite different and a good way off. Some- 
times we thought it was Lady Macbeth, sometimes Meg 
Merrilies, sometimes Lucretia Borgia, but never for a 
moment Juliet. We speak thus plainly of Miss Anderson 
because her injudicious and enthusiastic friends are injur- 
ing, if they are not ruining her. Her fine physique, her 
dash, her beautiful face, her clear ringing voice, have car- 
ried crowds off their heads — well, they are off at both 



MARY ANDERSON. 37 

ends; for on last Thursday night the amount of applauding 
was based on shoe leather. The lovely Anderson was 
called out at the end of each act. As to that, the active 
Borneo had his call. We never saw before precisely such 
a house. The north-west was out in full force. Kentucky 
came to the front like a little man. General Sherman, 
sitting at our elbow, wore out his gloves, blistered his 
hands, and then borrowed a cotton umbrella from his 
neighbor. Miss Anderson, with all her natural advan- 
tages, added to her love of the art, her indomitable will 
as shown in her square prominent jaw, has a career before 
her, but it is not down the path indicated by these enthu- 
siastic friends. ' The steeps where Fame's proud temple 
shines afar' are difficult of access, and genius waters them 
with more tears than sturdy, steady, persevering talent. 

"Charlotte Cushman told us once that the heaviest 
article she had to carry up was her heart. The divine 
actress who now leads the English-spoken stage began her 
professional career as a ballet dancer, and has grown her 
laurels from her tears. "We suspected Miss Anderson's 
success. It was too triumphant, too easy. After years of 
weary labor, of heart-breaking disappointments, of dreary 
obscurity, genius sometimes blazes out for a brief period 
to dazzle humanity; and quite as often never blazes, but 
disappears without a triumph. 

u To such life is not a battle, but a campaign with ten 
defeats, yea, twenty defeats to one victory. 

"Miss Anderson will think us harsh and unkind in this. 
She will live, we hope, to consider us her best friend. 

" There is one fact upon which she can comfort herself: 
she could not get two hours and a half of our time and a 
column in the Capitol were she without merit. There is 
value in her; but to fetch it out she must go back, begin 
lower, and give years to training, education, and hard 
work. She can labor ten years for the sake of living five. 
As for her support, it was of the sort afforded by John T., 
the showman, and very funny. Mrs. Germon, God bless 



83 MARY ANDERSON. 

her! was properly funny. She is the best old woman on 
end in the world. 

"Komeo (Mr. Morton) we have spoken of. Lingham 
is supposed to have done Mercutio. Well, he did do him. 
That is, he went through the motions. He seemed to be 
saying something anent the great case of Capulet vs. 
Montague, but so indistinct that there was a general sense 
of relief when he staggered off to die. Deaths generally 
had this effect Thursday night, and the house not only 
applauded the exits, but made itself exceedingly merry. 

"When Paris went down and a tombstone fell over 
him, his plaintive cry of ' Oh, I am killed!' was received 
with shouts of laughter. 

ic It was the most laughable we ever witnessed. In the 
first scene one of those marble statues, so peculiar to John 
T. 's mismanagement, that resemble granite in a bad state 
of small-pox, fell over. 

"The house was amazed to see it resolve itself into a 
board, and laughed tumultuously to note how it righted 
itself up in a mysterious manner, and stood in an easy 
reclining posture till the curtain fell. 

"The scene that exhibited the balcony affair was a 
sweet thing. Evidently the noble house of the Oapulets 
was in reduced circumstances. The building from which 
Juliet issued was a frame structure so frail in material 
that we feared a collapse. 

" If the carpenter who erected that structure for the 
Oapulets charged more than ten dollars currency he swin- 
dled the noble old duffer infamously. The front elevation 
came under that order of architecture known out West as 
Conestoga. It was all of fifteen feet in height, and de- 
pended for ornamentation on a brilliant horse cover thrown 
over the corner of the balcony, and a slop bucket that 
Juliet was evidently about to empty on the head of Eomeo 
when that youth made his presence known. The house 
shook so under Juliet's substantial tread, that an old lady 



MARY ANDERSON. C9 

near us wished to be taken out, declaring that 'that 
young female would get her neck broken next thing.' 

"In the last scene where the page (Miss Lulu Dickson) 
was ordered to extinguish the torch, the poor girl made 
frantic efforts, but failing, walked off with the thing 
blazing. 

" When Paris entered with his page, a youth in a night 
shirt, that youth carried in his countenance the fixed 
determination of putting out his torch at the right 
moment or dieing in the attempt. We all saw that. 

" Expectancy was worked up to a point of intense inter- 
est, so that when at last the word was given, a puff of wind 
not only extinguished the torch but shook the scenery, 
and made us thankful the young man did wear panta- 
loons, as the consequences might have been terrible. 

"When Count Paris fell mortally wounded, a tomb- 
stone at his side fell over him in the most convenient and 
charming manner. The house was so convulsed with 
merriment that when poor Juliet was exposed in the 
tomb she was greeted with laughter, much to the poor 
girl's embarrassment. And this is the sort of entertain- 
ment to which we have been treated throughout our en- 
tire season. But then the showman is a success and pays 
his bills." 

The great Eastern cities of America are regarded by 
an American artist much in the same light as is the me- 
tropolis by a provincial artist at home. Their approval 
is supposed to stamp as genuine the verdict of remoter 
districts. The success which had attended Mary Ander- 
son in her journeyings West and South was not to desert 
her when she presented herself before the presumably 
more critical audiences of the East. She made her East- 
ern debut at Pittsburg, the Birmingham of America, in 
the heat of the Presidential election of 1880, and met 
with a thoroughly enthusiastic reception, to proceed 
thence to Philadelphia, where she reaped plenty of honor, 
but very little money. Boston, the Athens of the New 



40 MARY ANDERSON. 

World, was reached at length. When Mary Anderson 
was taken down by the manager to see the vast Boston 
Theater, whose auditorium seats 4000 people, and which 
Henry Irving declared to be the finest in the world, she 
almost fainted with apprehension. She opened here in 
Evadne, and one journal predicted that she would take 
Cushman's place. This part was followed by Juliet, 
Meg Merrilies, and her other chief impersonations. On 
one day of her engagement the receipts at a matinee and 
an evening performance amounted together to the large 
sum of $7000. 

The visit to Boston was made memorable to Mary An- 
derson by her introduction to Longfellow. About a 
week after &he had opened, a friend of the poet's came to 
her with a request that she would pay him a visit at his 
pretty house in the suburbs of Boston, Longfellow being 
indisposed at the time, and confined tahis quaint old study, 
overlooking the waters of the sluggish Charles, and the 
scenery made immortal in his verse. Here was commenced 
a warm friendship between the beautiful young artist 
and the aged poet, which continued unbroken to the day 
of his death. He was seated when she entered, in a 
richly-carved chair, of which Longfellow told her this 
charming story. The "spreading chestnut tree," im- 
mortalized in " The Village Blacksmith," happened to 
stand in an outlying village near Boston, somewhat in-' 
conveniently for the public traffic at some cross roads. 
It became necessary to cut it down, and remove the 
forge beneath. But the village fathers did not venture 
to proceed to an act which they regarded as something 
like sacrilege, without consulting Longfellow. At their 
request he paid a visit of farewell to the spot, and sanc- 
tioned whafc was proposed. Not long after, a handsomely 
carved chair was forwarded to him, made from the wood 
of the "spreading chestnut tree," and which bore an in- 
scription commemorative of the circumstances under 
which it was given. Few of his possessions were dearer 



MARY ANDERSON. 4! 

to Longfellow than this dumb memento how deeply his 
poetry had sunk into the national heart of his country- 
men. It stood in the chimney corner of his study, and 
till the day of his death was always his favorite seat. 

The verdict of Longfellow upon Mary Anderson is 
worth that of a legion of newspaper critics, and his judg- 
ment of her Juliet deserves to be recorded in letters of 
gold. The morning after her benefit, he said to her, "I 
have been thinking of Juliet all night. Last night you 
were Juliet!" 

At the Boston Theater occurred an accident which 
shows the marvelous courage and power of endurance 
possessed by the young actress. In the play of " Meg Mer- 
rilies," she had to appear suddenly in one scene at the top 
of a cliff, some fifteen feet above the stage. To avoid the 
danger of falling over, it was necessary to use a staff. 
Mary Anderson had managed to find one of Cushman's, 
but the point having become smooth through use, she 
told one of the people of the theater to put a small nail 
at the bottom. Instead of this, he affixed a good-sized 
spike, and one night Mary Anderson, coming out as 
usual, drove this right through her foot, in her sudden 
stop on the cliffs brink. Without flinching, or moving 
a muscle, with Spartan fortitude she played the scene to 
the end, though almost fainting with pain, till oif the 
fall of the curtain the spiked staff was drawn out, not 
without force. Longfellow was much concerned at this 
accident, and on nights she did not play would sit by her. 
side in her box, and wrap the furred overcoat he used to 
wear carefully round her wounded foot. 

From Boston Mary Anderson proceeded to New York 
to fulfill a tw r o weeks' engagement at the Fifth Avenue 
Theater. She opened with a good company in "The 
Lady of Lyons/' General Sherman had advised her 
to read no papers, but one morning to her great encour- 
agement, some good friend thrust under her door a very 
favorable notice in the New York Herald. The engage- 



42 MARY ANDERSON. 

ment proved a great success, and was ultimately extended 
to six weeks, the actress playing two new parts, Juliet 
and The Daughter of Eoland. She had passed the last 
ordeal successfully, and might rejoice as she stood on the 
crest of the hill of Fame that the ambition of her young- 
life was at length realized. Her subsequent theatrical 
career in the States and Canada need not be recorded 
here. She had become America's representative tragedi- 
enne; there was none to dispute her claims. Year after 
year she continued to increase an already brilliant repu- 
tation, and to amass one of the largest fortunes it has 
ever been the happy lot of any artist to secure. 



CHAPTER V. 

FIRST VISIT TO ETJKOPE. 

Ik the summer of 1879, was paid Mary Anderson's first 
visit to Europe. It had long been eagerly anticipated. In 
the lands of the Old World was the cradle of the Art she 
loved so well, and it was with feelings almost of awe that 
she entered their portals. She had few if any introduc- 
tions, and spent a month in London wandering curiously 
through the conventional scenes usually visited by a 
stranger. Westminster Abbey was among her favorite 
haunts; its ancient aisles, its storied windows, its thou- 
sand memories of a past which antedated by so many 
centuries the civilization of her native land, appealed 
deeply to the ardent imagination of the impassioned 
girl. Here was a world of which she had read and 
dreamed, but whose over-mastering, living influence was 
now for the first time felt. It seemed like the first 
glimpse of verdant forest, of enameled meadow, of crystal 
stream, of pure sky to one who had been blind. It was 
another atmosphere, another life. Brief as was her visit, 
it gave an impulse to those germs which lie deep in every 
poetic soul. She saw there was an illimitable world of 
Art, whose threshold as yet she had hardly trodden — and 



MARY ANDERSON. 43 

she went home full of the inspiration caught at the 
ancient fountains of Poetry and Art. From that time an 
intellectual change seems to have passed over her. Her 
studies took new channels, and her impersonations were 
mellowed and glorified from her personal contact with 
the associations of a great past. 

A visit to Stratford-on-Avon was one of the most de- 
lightful events of the trip. It seemed to Mary Anderson 
the emblem of peace and contentment and quiet; and 
though as a stranger she did not then enjoy so many of 
the privileges which were willingly accorded her during 
the present visit to this country, she still looks back to 
the day when she knelt by the grave of Shakespeare as 
one of the most eventful and inspiring of her life. 

Much of the time of Mary Anderson's European visit 
was spent in Paris. Through the kindness of General 
Sherman she obtained introductions to Ristori and other 
distinguished artists, and, to her delight, secured also the 
entree behind the scenes of the Theatre Francais. Its 
magnificent green-room, the walls lined with portraits of 
departed celebrities of that famous theater, amazed her 
by its splendor; and to her it was a strange and curious 
sight to see the actors in "Hernani" come in and play 
cards in their gorgeous stage costumes at intervals in the 
performance. On one of these occasions she naively 
asked Sarah Bernhardt why her portrait did not appear 
on the walls ? The great artist replied that she hoped 
Mary Anderson did not wish her dead, as only under 
such circumstances could an appearance there be per- 
mitted to her. "Behind the scenes" of the Theatre 
Francais was a source of never-wearying interest, and 
Mary Anderson thought the effects of light attained there 
far surpassed anything she had witnessed on the English 
or American stage. 

The verdict of Ristori, before whom she recited, was 
highly favorable, and the great tragedienne predicted a 
brilliant career for the young actress, and declared she 



44 J[ARY AJSf&BRSON. 

would be a great success with an English company in 
Paris, while the "divine Sarah " affirmed that she had 
never seen greater originality. On the return journey 
from Paris a brief stay was made at the quaint city of 
Rouen. Joan of Arc's stake., and the house where, tra- 
dition has it, she resided, were sacred spots to Mary An- 
derson; and the ancient towers, the curious old streets, 
overlooking the fertile valley through which the Seine 
wanders like a silver thread, are memories which have* 
since remained to her ever green. During her first visit 
to England Mary Anderson never dreamt of the possibil- 
ity that she herself might appear on the English stage. 
Indeed the effect of her first European tour was depress- 
ing and disheartening. She saw only how much there 
was for her to see, how much to learn in the world of Art. 
A feeling of home-sickness came over her, and she longed 
to be back at her seaside home where she could watch the 
wild restless Atlantic as it swept in upon the New Jersey 
shore, and listen to the sad music of the weary waves. 
This was the instinct of a true artist nature, which had 
depths capable of being stirred by the touch of what is 
great and noble. 

In the following year, however, there came an offer 
from the manager of Drury Lane to appear upon its 
boards. Mary Anderson received it with a pleased sur- 
prise. It told that her name had spread beyond her na- 
tive land, and that thus early had been earned a reputation 
which commended her as worthy to appear on the stage 
of a great and famous London theater. But her reply 
was a refusal. She thought herself hardly finished enough 
to face such a test of her powers; and the natural am- 
bition of a successful actress to extend the area of her 
triumph seemed to have found no place in her heart. 



MARY ANDERSON. 45 

CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE. — EXPERIENCES ON THE EKGLISH 

STAGE. 

The interval of five years which elapsed between Mary 
Anderson's first and second visits to Europe was busily 
occupied by starring tours in the States and Canada. Mr. 
Henry Abbey's first proposal, in 1883, for an engagement 
at the Lyceum was met with the same negative which had 
been given to that of Mr. Augustus Harris. But, hap- 
pening some time afterw T ard to meet her step-father, Dr. 
Griffin, in Baltimore, Mr. Abbey again urged his offer, 
to which a somewhat reluctant consent was at length 
given. The most ambitious moment of her artist-life 
seemed to have arrived at last. If she attained success, 
the crown was set on all the previous triumphs of her art; 
if failure were the issue, she would return to America 
discredited, if not disgraced, as an actress. The very 
crisis of her stage-life had come now in earnest. It found 
her despondent, almost despairing; at the last moment 
she was ready to draw back. She had then none of the 
many friends who afterward welcomed her with heartfelt 
sincerity whenever the curtain rose on her performance. 
She saw Irving in " Louis XL" and "Skylock." The 
brilliant powers of the great actor filled her at once with 
admiration and with dread, when she remembered how 
soon she too must face the same audiences. She sought 
to. distract herself by making a round of the London 
theaters, but the most amusing of farces could hardly 
draw from her a passing smile, or lift for a moment the 
weight of apprehension which pressed on her heart. The 
very play in which she was destined first to present her- 
self before a London audience was condemned beforehand. 
To make a debut as Parthenia was to court certain failure . 
The very actors who rehearsed with her were Job's com- 
forters. She saw in their faces a dreary vista of empty 
houses, of hostile critics, of general disaster. She almost 



46 MART ANDERSON. 

broke down under the trial, and the sight of her first 
play-bill which told that the die was irrevocably cast for 
good or evil made her heart sink with fear. On going 
down to the theater upon the opening night she found, 
with mingled pleasure and surprise, that on both sides of 
the Atlantic fellow artists were regarding her with kindly 
sympathizing hearts. Her dressing-room was filled with 
beautiful floral offerings from many distinguished actors 
in England and America, while telegrams from Booth, 
McCullough, Lawrence Barrett, Irving, Ellen Terry, 
Christine Nilsson, and Lillie Langtry, bade her be of good 
courage, and wished her success. The overture smote 
like a dirge on her ear, and when the callboy came to an- 
nounce that the moment of her entrance was at hand, it 
reminded her of nothing so much as the feeling of 
mourners when the sable mute appears at the door, as a 
signal to form the procession to the tomb. But in a 
moment the ordeal was safely passed, and passed forever 
so far as an English audience is concerned. Seldom has 
any actress received so warm and enthusiastic a reception. 
Mary Anderson confesses now that never till that moment 
did she experience anything so generous and so sympa- 
thetic, and offered to one who was then but 6i a stranger 
in a strange land." Mary Anderson's Parthenia was a 
brilliant success. Her glorious youth, her strange beauty, 
her admirable impersonation of a part of exceptional 
difficulty, won their way to all hearts. A certain amount 
of nervousness and timidity was inevitable to a first per- 
formance. The sudden revulsion of feeling, from deep 
despondency to complete triumphant success, made it 
difficult, at times, for the actress to master her feelings 
sufficiently to make her words audible through the house. 
One candid youth in the gallery endeavored to encourage 
her with a kindly " Speak up, Mary." The words re- 
called her in an instant to herself, and for the rest of the 
evening she had regained her wonted self-possession. 
From that time till Mary Anderson's first Lyceum 



MARY ANDERSON. 47 

season closed, the world of London flocked to see her. 
The house was packed nightly from floor to ceiling, and 
she is said to have played to more money than the dis- 
tinguished lessee of the theater himself. Among the 
visitors with whom Mary Anderson was a special favorite 
were the prince and princess. They witnessed each of 
her performances more than once, and both did her the 
honor to make her personal acquaintance, and compliment 
her on her success. , So many absurd stories have been 
circulated as to Mary Anderson's alleged unwillingness to 
meet the Prince of Wales, that the true story may as well 
be told once for all here. On one of the early perform- 
ances of "Ingomar,"the prince and princess occupied the 
royal box, and the prince caused it to be intimated to 
Mary Anderson that he should be glad to be introduced 
to her after the third act. The little republican naively 
responded that she never saw any one till after the close of 
the performance. H. R. H. promptly rejoined that he 
always left the theater immediately the curtain fell. 
Meanwhile the manager represented to her the ungracious- 
ness of not complying with a request which half the 
actresses in London would have sacrificed their diamonds 
to receive. And so at the close of the third act Mary 
Anderson presented herself, leaning on her father's arm, 
in the anteroom of the royal box. Only the prince was 
there, and "He said to me/' relates Mary Anderson, 
f more charming things than were ever said to me, in a 
few minutes, in all my life. I was delighted with his 
kindness, and with his simple pleasant manner, which 
put me at my ease in a moment ; but I was rather sur- 
prised that the princess did not see me as well." The 
piece over, and there came a second message, that the 
princess also wished to be introduced. With her winning 
smile she took Mary Anderson's hand in hers, and thank- 
ing her for the pleasure she had afforded by her charming 
impersonation, graciously presented Mary with her own 
bouquet. 



4B MARY ANDERSON. 

The true version of another story, this time as to the 
Princess of Wales and Mary Anderson, may as well now be 
given. One evening Count Gleichen happened to be dining 
tete-a-tete with the prince and princess at Marlborough 
House. When they adjourned to the drawing-room, the 
princess showed the count some photographs of a young 
lady, remarking upon her singular beauty, and suggesting 
what a charming subject she would make for his chisel. 
The count was fain to confess that he did not even know 
who the lady was, and had to be informed that she was 
the new American actress, beautiful Mary Anderson. He 
expressed the pleasure it would give him to have so 
charming a model in his studio, and asked the princess 
whether he was at liberty to tell Mary Anderson that the 
suggestion came from her, to which the princess replied 
that he certainly might do so. Three replicas of the 
bust will be executed, of which Count Gleichen intends 
to present one to her royal highness, another to Mary 
Anderson's mother, while the third will be placed in the 
Grosvenor Gallery. This is really all the foundation for 
the story of a royal command to Count Gleichen to 
execute a bust of Mary Anderson for the Princess of 
"Wales! 

Among those who were constant visitors at the Lyceum 
was Lord Lytton, or as Mary Anderson loves to call him, 
"Owen Meredith/' Her representation of his father's 
heroine in " The Lady of Lyons" naturally interested him 
greatly, and it is possible he may himself write for her a 
special play. Between them there soon sprung up one of 
those warm friendships often seen between two artist 
natures, and Lord Lytton paid Mary Anderson the com- 
pliment of lending her an unpublished manuscript play of 
his father's to read. Tennyson, too, sought the acquaint- 
ance of one who in his verse would make a charming pict- 
ure. He was invited to meet her at dinner at a London 
house, and was her cavalier on the occasion. The author 
of "The Princess" did not in truth succeed in supplant- 



Mary anderso;\. 49 

ing in her regard the bar3 of her native land, Longfellow; 
but he so won on Mary's heart that she afterward pre- 
sented him with the gift — somewhat unpoetic, it must be 
admitted — of a bottle of priceless Kentucky w r hisky, of a 
fabulous age! 

If Mary Anderson was a favorite with the public before 
the curtain, she was no less popular with her fellow artists 
on the stage. Jealousy and ill-will not seldom reign 
among the surroundings of a star. It is a trial to human 
nature to be but a lesser light revolving round some brill- 
iant luminary — but the setting to adorn the jewel. But 
Mary Anderson won the hearts of every one on the boards, 
from actors to scene -shifters. And at Christmas, in which 
she is a great believer, every one, high or low, connected 
with the Lyceum, was presented with some kind and 
thoughtful mark of her remembrance. And when the 
season closed, she was presented in turn, on the stage,, 
with a beautiful diamond suit, the gift of the fellow 
artists who had shared for so long her triumphs and her 
toils. 

Mary Anderson's success in London was fully indorsed 
by the verdict of the great provincial towns. Everywhere 
she was received with enthusiasm, and hundreds were 
nightly turned from the doors of the theaters where she 
appeared. In Edinburgh she played to a house of £450, 
a larger sum than was ever taken at the doors of the 
Lyceum. The receipts of the week in Manchester were 
larger than those of any preceding week in the theatrical 
history of the great Northern town. Taken as a whole, 
her success has been without a parallel on the English 
stage. If she has not altogether escaped hostile criticism 
in the press, she has won the sympathies of the public in 
a way which no artist of other than English birth has 
succeeded in doing before her. They have come and gone, 
dazzled us for a time, but have left behind them no 
endearing remembrance. Mary Anderson has found her 
way to our hearts. It seems almost impossible that she 



50 MARY ANDERSON. 

can ever leave us to resume again tlie old life of a wander- 
ing star across the great American continent. It may be 
rash to venture a prophecy as to what the future may 
bring forth; but thus much we may say with truth, that, 
whenever Mary Anderson departs finally from our shores, 
the name of England will remain graven on her heart. 



CHAPTER VII. 

IMPRESSIONS OF EKGLAKD. 

Almost every traveler from either side of the Atlantic, 
with the faintest pretensions to distinction, bursts forth 
on his return to his native shores in a volume of " Im- 
pressions. " Archaeologists and philosophers, novelists and 
divines, apostles of sweetness and light, and star actors, 
are accustomed thus to favor the public with volumes 
which the public could very often be well content to spare. 
It is but natural that we should wish to know what Mary 
Anderson thinks of the " fast-anchored isle" and the 
folk who dwell therein. I wish, indeed, that these "Im- 
pressions" could have been given in her own words. 
The work would have been much better done, and far 
more interesting; but failing this, I must endeavor, fol- 
lowing a recent illustrious example, to give them at sec- 
ond hand. During the earlier months of her stay among 
us, she lived somewhat the life of a recluse. Shut up in 
a pretty villa under the shadow of the Hampstead Hills, 
she saw little society but that of a few fellow artists, who 
found their way to her on Sunday afternoons. Indeed, 
she almost shrank from the idea of entering general so- 
ciety. The English world she wished to know was a 
world of the past, peopled by the creations of genius; not 
the modern world, which crowds London drawing-rooms. 
She saw the English people from the stage, and they were 
to her little more than audiences which vanished from 
her life when the curtain descended. Prom her earliest 
years she had been, in common with many of her country- 



MART ANDERSON. 51 

men, a passionate admirer of the great English novelist, 
Dickens. Much of her leisure was spent in pilgrimages 
to the spots round London which he has made immortal. 
Now and then, with her brother for a protector, she would 
go to lunch at an ancient hostelry in the Borough, where 
one of the scenes of Dickens' stories is laid, but which 
has degenerated now almost to the rank of a public-house. 
Here she would try to people the place in fancy with the 
characters of the novel. " To listen to the talk of the 
people at such places," she once said to me, " was better 
than any play I ever saw." 

Stratford-on-Avon too, was, of course, revisited, and 
many days were spent in lingering lovingly over the me- 
morials of her favorite Shakespeare. She soon became 
well known to the guardians of the spot, and many privi- 
leges were granted to her not accorded on her first visit, 
four years before, when she was regarded but as a unit in 
the crowd of passing visitors who throng to the shrine of 
the great master of English dramatic art. On one occa- 
sion when she was in the church of Stratford-on-Avon, 
the ancient clerk asked her if she would mind being 
locked in while he went home to his tea. Nothing loath 
she consented, and remained shut up in the still solemnity 
of the place. Kneeling down by the grave of Shake- 
speare, she took out a pocket "Romeo and Juliet" and 
recited Juliet's death scene close to the spot where the 
great master, who created her, lay in his long sleep. But 
presently the wind rose to a storm, the branches of the 
surrounding trees dashed against the windows, darkness 
spread through the ghostly aisles, and terror-stricken, Mary 
fled to the door, glad enough to be released by the re- 
turning janitor. 

Rural England with its moss-grown farmhouses, its 
gray steeples, its white cottages clustering under their 
shadow, its tiny fields, its green hedgerows, garrisoned 
by the mighty elms, charmed Mary Anderson beyond ex- 
pression, contrasting so strongly with the vast prairies, 



52 MARY ANDERSON. 

the primeval forests, the mighty rivers of her own giant 
land. These were the boundaries of her horizon in the 
earlier months of her stay among us; she knew little but 
the England of the past, and the England as the stranger 
sees it, who passes on his travels through its smiling land- 
scapes. But a change of residence to Kensington brought 
Mary Anderson more within reach of those whom she had 
so charmed upon the stage, and who longed to have the 
opportunity of knowing her personally. By degrees her 
drawing-rooms became the scene of an informal Sunday 
afternoon reception. Artists and novelists, poets and 
sculptors, statesmen and divines, journalists and people 
of fashion crowded to see her, and came away wondering 
at the skill and power with which this young girl, evi- 
dently fresh to society, could hold her own, and converse 
fluently and intelligently on almost any subject. If the 
verdict of London society was that Mary Anderson was 
as clever in the drawing-room as she was attractive on 
the stage, she, in her turn, was charmed to speak face to 
face with many whose names and whose works had long 
been familiar to her. It was a new world of art and intel- 
lect and genius to which she was suddenly introduced, and 
which seemed to her all the more brilliant after the some- 
what prosaic uniformity of society in her own republican 
land. To say that she admires and loves England with 
all her heart may be safely asserted. To say that it has 
almost succeeded in stealing away her heart from the 
land of her birth, she would hardly like to hear said. But 
we think her mind is somewhat that of Captain Mac- 
heath, in the "Beggars' Opera" — 

" How happy could I be with either, 
Were t'other dear charmer away.'' 

One superiority, at least, she confesses England to have 
over America. The dreadful " interviewer " who has 
haunted her steps for the last eight years of her life with 
a dogged pertinacity which would take no denial, was 
here nowhere to be seen. He exists we know, but she 



MARY ANDERSON. 53 

failed to recognize the same genus in the quite harmless- 
looking gentleman, who, occasionally on the stage after a 
performance, or in her drawing-room, engaged her in 
conversation, when leading questions were skillfully dis- 
guised; and., then, much to her astonishment, afterward 
produced a picture of her in print with materials she was 
quite unconscious of having furnished. She failed, she 
admits now, to see the conventional " note-book," so sym- 
bolical of the calling at home, and thus her fears and sus- 
picions were disarmed. 

One instance of Mary Anderson's kind and womanly 
sympathy to some of the poorest of London's waifs and 
strays should not be unrecorded here. It was represented 
to her at Christmas time that funds were needed for a 
dinner to a number of poor boys in Seven Dials. She 
willingly found them, and a good old-fashioned English 
dinner was given, at her expense, in the Board School 
Room to some three hundred hungry little fellows, who 
crowded through the snow of the wintry New Year's Day 
to its hospitable roof. Though she is not of our faith, 
Mary Anderson was true to the precepts of that Christian 
Charity which, at such seasons, knows no distinction of 
creed; and of all the kind acts which she has done quietly 
and unostentatiously since she came among us, this is one 
which commends her perhaps most of all to our affection 
and regard. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE VERDICT OF THE CRITICS. 

" Quot homines, tot sententicB." 

It may, perhaps, be interesting to record here some of 
the criticisms which have appeared in several of the lead- 
ing London and provincial journals on Mary Anderson's 
performances, and especially on her debut at the Lyceum. 
Such notices are forgotten almost as soon as read, and 



54 MARY ANDERSON. 

except for some biographical purpose like the present, 
lie buried in the files of a newspaper office. It is usual 
to intersperse them with the text; but for the purpose of 
more convenient reference they have been included in a 
separate chapter. 

Standard, 3d September, 1883. 
" The opening of the Lyceum on Saturday evening, 
was signalized by the assembly of a crowded and fashion- 
able audience to witness the first appearance in this 
country of Miss Mary Anderson as Parthenia in Maria 
LovelFs four-act play of 'Ingomar.' Though young m 
years, Miss Anderson is evidently a practiced actress. 
She knows the business of the stage perfectly, is learned 
in the art of making points, and, what is more, knows 
how to bide her opportunity. The wise discretion which 
imposes restraint upon the performer was somewhat too 
rigidly observed in the earlier scenes on Saturday night, 
the consequence being that in one of the most impressive 
passages of the not very inspired dialogue, the little dis- 
tance between the sublime and the ridiculous was 
bridged by a voice from the gallery, which, adopting a 
tone, ejaculated 'A little louder, Mary/ A less experi- 
enced artist might well have been taken aback by this 
sudden infraction of dramatic proprieties. Miss Ander- 
son, however, did not loose her nerve, but simply took 
the hint in good part and acted upon it. There is very 
little reason to dwell at any length upon the piece. Miss 
Anderson will, doubtless, take a speedy opportunity of 
■ appearing in some other work in which her capacity as 
an actress can be better gauged than in Maria Lovell's 
bit of tawdry sentiment. A real power of delineating 
passion was exhibited in the scene where Parthenia re- 
pulses the advances of her too venturesome admirer, and 
in this direction, to our minds, the best efforts of the 
lady tend. All we can do at present is to chronicle Miss 
Anderson's complete success, the recalls being so numer- 
ous as to defy particularization. " 



MARY ANDERSON. 55 

TJie Times, 3d September, 1883. 
" Miss Mary Anderson, although but three or four and 
twenty, has for several years past occupied a leading po- 
sition in the United States, and ranks as the highest of 
the American ' stars/ whose effulgence Mr. Abbey relies 
upon to attract the public at the Lyceum in Mr. Irving's 
absence. Recommendations of this high order were 
more than sufficient to insure Miss Anderson a cordial 
reception. They were such as to dispose a sym- 
pathetic audience to make the most ample allowance 
for nervousness on the part of the debutante, and 
to distrust all impressions they might have of an 
unfavorable kind, or at least to grant the posses- 
sion of a more complete knowledge of the lady's 
attainments to those who had trumpeted her praise 
so loudly. That such should have been the mood of 
the house, was a circumstance not without its influence on 
the events of the evening. It was manifestly owing in 
some measure to the critical spirit being subordinated for 
the time being to the hospitable, that Miss Anderson was 
able to obtain all the outward and visible signs of a 
dramatic triumph in a role which intrinsically had little to 
commend it Usually it is the rude man- 
liness, the uncouth virtues, the awkward and childlike 
submissiveness of that tamed Bull of Bashan [Ingomar] 
that absorbs the attention of a theatrical audience. On 
Saturday evening the center of interest was, of course, 
transferred to Parthenia. To the interpretation of this 
character Miss Anderson brings natural gifts of rare ex- 
cellence, gifts of face and form and action, which suffice 
almost themselves to play the part; and the warmth of 
the applause which greeted her as she first tripped upon 
the stage expressed the admiration no less than the wel- 
come of the house. Her severely simple robes of virgin 
white, worn with classic grace, revealed a figure as lis- 
some and perfect of contour as a draped Venus of Thor- 
waldsen, her face seen under her mass of dark brown 



m MARY ANDERSON. 

hair, negligently bound with a ribbon, was too mignonne, 
perhaps, to be classic, but looked pretty and girlish. A 
performance so graced could not fail to be pleasing. 
And yet it was impossible not to feel, as the play pro- 
gressed, that to the fine embodiment of the romantic hero- 
ine, art was in some degree wanting. The beautiful 
Parthenia, like a soulless statue, pleased the eye, but left 
the heart untouched. It became evident that faults of 
training or, perhaps, of temperament, were to be set off 
against the actress' unquestionable merits. The elegant 
artificiality of the American school, a tendency to pose 
and be self-conscious, to smirk even, if tha word may be 
permitted, especially when advancing to the footlights to 
receive a full measure of applause, were fatal to such 
sentiment as even so stilted a play could be made to 
yield. It was but too evident that Parthenia was at all 
times more concerned with the fall of her drapery than 
with the effect of her speeches, and that gesture, action, 
intonation— everything which constitutes a living indi- 
viduality were in her case not so much the outcome of 
the feeling proper to the character, as the manifestation 
of diligent painstaking art which had not yet learnt to 
conceal itself. The gleam of the smallest spark of genius 
w r ould have been a welcome relief to the monotony of 

talent It must not be forgotten, however, that 

a highly artificial play like ' Ingomar ' is by no means a 
favorable medium for the display of an actress' powers, 
though it may fairly indicate their nature. Before a 
definite rank can be assigned to her among English 
actresses, Miss Anderson must be seen in some of her 
other characters." 

Daily News, 3d September, 1883. 
" It will be recollected that Mr. Irving, in his farewell 
speech at the Lyceum Theater, on the 28th of July, made 
a point of bepeaking a kindly welcome for Miss Mary 
Anderson on her appearance at his theater during his 
absence, as the actress he alluded to was a lady whose 



MARY ANDERSON. 57 

beauty and talent had made her the favorite of America, 
from Maine to California. It would .not perhaps be un- 
fair to attribute to this cordial introduction something of 
the special interest which was evidently aroused by Miss 
Anderson's debut here on Saturday night. English 
playgoers recognize but vaguely the distinguishing char- 
acteristics of actors and actresses, whose fame has been 
won wholly by their performances on the other side of 
the Atlantic. It was therefore just as well that before 
Miss Anderson arrived some definite claim as to her pre- 
tentions should be authoritatively put forward. These 
would, it must be confessed, have been liable to miscon- 
ception if they had been judged solely by her first per- 
formance on the London stage. ' Ingomar ' is not a 
play, and Parthenia is certainly not a character, calcu- 
lated to call forth the higher powers of an ambitious 
actress. As a matter of fact, Miss Anderson, who began 
her histrion career at an early age, and is even now of 
extremely youthful appearance, has had plenty of experi- 
ence and success in roles of much more difficulty, and 
much wider possibilities. Her modest enterprise on 
Saturday night was quite as successful as could have been 
anticipated. There is not enough human reality about 
Parthenia to allow her representative to interest very 
deeply the sympathy of her hearers. There is not enough 
poetry in the drama to enable the actress to mar our im- 
agination by calling her own into play. What Miss 
Anderson could achieve was this: she was able in the first 
place to prove, by the aid of the Massilian maiden's be- 
coming, yet exacting attire, that her personal advantages 
have been by no means overrated. Her features regular 
yet full of expression, her figure slight but not spare, the 
pose of her small and graceful head, all these, together 
with a girlish prettiness of manner, and a singularly re- 
fined bearing, are quite enough to account for at least 
one of the phases of Miss Anderson's popularity. Her 
voice is not wanting in melody of a certain bind, though 



58 MARY ANDERSON. 

its tones lack variety. Her accent is slight, and seldom 
unpleasant. Of her elocution it is scarcely fair to judge 
until she has caught more accurately the pitch required 
for the theater. For the accomplishment of any great 
things Miss Anderson had not on Saturday night any 
opportunity, nor did her treatment of such mild pathos 
and passion as the character permitted impress us with 
the idea that her command of deep feeling is as yet ma- 
tured. So far as it goes, however, her method is ex- 
tremely winning, and her further efforts, especially in 
the direction of comedy and romantic drama, will be 
watched with interest, and may be anticipated with 
pleasure." 

Morning Post, 3rd September, 1883. 
*'■ Lyceum Theater. 
" This theater was reopened under the management of 
Mr. Henry Abbey on Saturday evening, when was revived 
Mrs. LovelPs play called ' Ingomar/ a picturesque but 
somewhat ponderous work of German origin, first pro- 
duced some thirty years ago at Drury Lane with Mr. 
James Anderson and Miss Vandenhoff as the principal 
personages. The interest centers not so much in the bar- 
barian Ingomar as in his enchantress, Parthenia, of whom 
Miss Mary Anderson, an American artist of fine renown, 
proves a comely and efficient representative. In sum- 
ming up the qualifications of an actress the Transatlantic 
critics never fail to take into account her personal charms 
— a fascinating factor. Borne on the wings of an en- 
thusiastic press, the fame of Miss Anderson's loveliness 
had reached our shores long before her own arrival. The 
Britishers were prepared to see a very handsome lady, 
and they have not been disappointed. Miss Anderson's 
beauty is of Grecian type, with a head of classic contour, 
finely chiseled features, and a tall statuesque figure, 
whose Hellenic expression a graceful costume of antique 
design sets off to the best advantage. You fancy that 
you have seen her before, and so perhaps you have upon 



MARY ANDERSON. 59 

the canvas of Angelica Kauffman. For the rest, Miss 
Anderson is very clever and highly accomplished. Her 
talents are brilliant and abundant, and they have been 
carefully cultivated to every perfection of art save one — 
the concealment of it. She has grace, but it is studied, 
not negligent grace; her action is always picturesque and 
obviously premeditated; everything she says and does is 
impressive, but it speaks a foregone conclusion. Her 
acting is polished and in correct taste. What it wants is 
freshness, spontaneity, abandon. Among English artists 
of a bygone age her style might probably find a parallel in 
the stately elegance and artificial grandeur of the Kembles. 
It has nothing in common with the electric verve and 
romantic ardor of Edmund Kean. Of the feu sacre 
which irradiated Rachel and gives to Bernhardt splendor 
ineffable, Miss Anderson has not a spark. She is not in- 
spired. Hers is a pure, bright, steady light; but it lacks 
mystic effulgence. It is not empyreal. It is not e the 
light that never was on sea or land — the consecration and 
the poet's dream/ It is not genius. It is talent. In a 
word, Miss Anderson is beautiful, winsome, gifted, and 
accomplished. To say this is to say much, and it fills to 
the brim the measure of legitimate praise. She is an 
eminently good, but not a great artist." 

Daily Telegraph, 3rd September, 1883. 
a There was a natural desire to see, nay, rather let us 
say to welcome Miss Mary Anderson, who made her debut 
as Parthenia m 'Ingomar' on Saturday evening last. 
The fame of this actress had already preceded her. An 
enthusiastic climber up the rugged mountain paths of the 

art she had elected to serve an earnest volunteer 

in the almost forlorn cause of the poetical drama: a 
believer in the past, not merely because it is past, 
but because in it was embodied much of the beauti- 
ful and the hopeful that has been lost to us, Miss 
Mary Anderson was assured an honest greeting at 
a theater of cherished memories It has 



60 MARY ANDERSON. 

been said that the friends of Miss Anderson were very 
ill-advised to allow her to appear as Parthenia in the now 
almost-forgotten play of ' Ingomar/ We venture to differ 
entirely with this opinion. That the American actress 
interested, moved, and at times delighted her audience 
in a play supposed to be unfashionable and out of date, 
is, in truth, the best feather that can be placed in her 

cap There must clearly be something in an 

actress who cannot only hold her own as Parthenia, but 

in addition dissipate the dullness of ' Ingomar/ 

And now comes the question, how far Miss Mary Ander- 
son succeeded in a task that requires both artistic instinct 
and personal charm to carry it to a successful issue. The 
lady has been called classical, Greek, and so on, but is, 
in truth, a very modern reproduction of a classical type — 
a Venus by Mr. Gibson, rather than a Venus by Milo; a 
classic draped figure of a Wedgwood plaque more than 
an echo from the Parthenon ..... The actress has 
evidently been well taught, and is both an apt and clever 
pupil; she speaks clearly, enunciates well, occasional^ 
conceals the art she has so closely studied, and is at times 

both tender and graceful Her one great fault 

is insincerity, or, in other words, inability thoroughly 
to grasp the sympathies of the thoughtful part of her 
audience. She is destitute of the supreme gift of sen- 
sibility that Talma considers essential, and Diderot main- 
tains is detrimental to the highest acting. Diderot may 
be right, and Talma may be wrong, but we are convinced 
that the art Miss Anderson has practiced is, on the whole, 
barren and unpersuasive. She does not appear to feel 
the words she speaks, or to be deeply moved by the 
situations in which she is placed. Sh e is forever acting — 
thinking of her attitudes, posing very prettily, but still 

posing for all that She weeps, but there are no 

tears in her eyes; she murmurs her love verses with 
charming cadence, but there is no throb of heart in 
them These things, however, did not seem to 



MARY ANDERSON. 61 

affect her audience. They cheered her as if their hearts 

were really touched These, however, are but 

early impressions, and we shall be anxious to see her in 
still another delineation." 

Standard, 10th December, 1883. 
"Lyceum Theater. 

"Miss Mary Anderson has won such favor from aud- 
iences at the Lyceum, that anything she did would 
attract interest and curiosity. Galatea, in Mr. W. S. 
Gilbert's mythological comedy, 'Pygmalion and Gala- 
tea/ has, moreover, been spoken of as one of the act- 
ress' chief successes, and a crowded house on Saturday 
evening was the result of the announcement of its re- 
vival. An ideal Galatea could scarcely be realized, for 
there should be in the triumph of the sculptor's art, en- 
dowed by the gods with life, a supernatural grace and 
beauty. The singular picturesqueness of Miss Anderson's 
poses and gestures, the consequences of careful study of 
the best sculpture, has been noted in all that she has 
done, and this quality fits her peculiarly for the part of 
the vivified statue. In this respect it is little to say that 
Galatea has never before been represented with so near 
an approach to perfection." 

Daily News, 10th December, 1883. 

"The part of Galatea, in which Miss Anderson made 
her first appearance in England at the Lyceum Theater 
on Saturday evening, enables this delightful actress to 
exhibit in her fullest charms the exquisite grace of 
form and the simple elegance of gesture and movement 
by virtue of which she stands wholly without a rival on 
the stage. Whether in the alcove, where she is first dis- 
covered motionless upon the pedestal, or when miracu- 
lously endued, with life, she moves, a beautiful yet dis- 
cordant element in the Athenian sculptor's household. 
The statuesque outline and the perfect harmony between 
the figure of the actress and her surroundings, were strik- 
ing enough to draw more than once from the crowded 



62 MARY ANDERSON. 

theater, otherwise hushed and attentive, an audible ex- 
pression of pleasure. Rarely, indeed, can an attempt to 
satisfy by actual bodi ] y presentment the ideal of a poetical 
legend have approached so nearly to absolute perfection. " 
The Morning Post, 10th December, 1883. 
" ' Pygmalion and Galatea,' a play in which Miss 
Mary Anderson is said to have scored her most generally 
accepted success in her own country, has now taken at the 
Lyceum the place of ' The Lady of Lyons/ a drama cer- 
tainly not well fitted to the young actress' capabilities. 
Mr. Gilbert's well-known fairy comedy is in many re- 
spects exactly suited to the display of Miss Anderson's 
special merits. Its heroine is a statue, and a very beau- 
tiful simulation of chiseled marble was sure to be 
achieved by a lady of Miss Anderson's personal advan- 
tages, and of her approved skill in artistic posing. More- 
over, the sub-acid spirit of the piece rarely allows its sen- 
timent to go very deep, and it is in the expression — 
perhaps, we should write the experience— of really earnest 
emotion, that Miss Anderson's chief deficiency lies. Gal- 
atea is moreover by no means the strongest acting part in 
the comedy, affording few of the opportunities for the ex- 
hibition of passion, which fall to the lot of the heart- 
broken and indignant wife, Cynisca. Although in 1871, 
on the original production of the play, Mrs. Kendall 
made much of Galatea's womanly pathos, there is plenty 
of room for an effective rendering of the character, which 
deliberately hides the woman in the statue. Such a ren- 
dering is, as might have been expected, Miss Anderson's. 
Even in her ingenious scenes of comedy with Leucippe 
and with Chrysos, there is no more dramatic vivacity than 
might be looked for in a temporarily animated block of 
stone. Her love for the sculptor who has given her vital- 
ity is perfectly cold in its purity. There is no spon- 
taneity m the accents in which it is told, no amorous im- 
pulse to which it gives rise. This new Galatea, however, 
is fair to look upon — so fair in her statuesque attitudes 



MARY ANDERSON. 63 

and her shapely presence, that the infatuation of the man 
who created her is readily understood. By the classic 
beauty of her features and the perfect molding of her 
figure she is enabled to give all possible credibility to the 
legend of her miraculous birth. Moreover, the refine- 
ment of her bearing and manner allows no jarring note 
to be struck, and although, when Galatea sadly returns 
to marble not a tear is shed by the spectator, it is felt 
that a plausible and consistent interpretation of the char- 
acter has been given." 

Tlie Times, 10th December, 1883. 
" Mr. Gilbert's play i Pygmalion and Galatea/ is a 
perversion of Ovid's fable of the Sculptor of Cyprus, the 
mam interest of which upon the stage is derived from its 
cynical contrast between the innocence of the beautiful 
nymph of stone whom Pygmalion's love endows with life, 
and the conventional prudishness of society. Obviously 
the purpose of such a travesty may be fulfilled without 
any call upon the deeper emotions — upon the stress of 
passion, w r hich springs from that ' knowledge of good and 
evil ' transmitted by Eve to all her daughters. It is suffi- 
cient that the living and breathing Galatea of the play 
should seem to embody the classic marble, that she should 
move about the stage with statuesque grace and that she 
should artlessly discuss the relations of the sexes in the 
language of double intent. Miss Anderson's degree of 
talent, as shown in the impersonations she has already 
given us, and her command of classical pose, have already 
suggested this character as one for which she was emi- 
nently fitted. It was therefore no surprise to those who 
have been least disposed to admit this lady's claim to 
greatness as an actress that her Galatea on Saturday night 
should have been an ideally beautiful and tolerably com- 
plete embodiment of the part. If the heart was not 
touched, as, indeed, in such a play it scarcely ought to be, 
the eye was enabled to repose upon the finest tableau vi- 
vant that the stage has ever seen. Upon the curtains of 



64 MARY ANDERSON. 

the alcove being withdrawn, where the statue still inani- 
mate rests upon its pedestal, the admiration of the house 
was unbounded. Not only was the pose of the figure 
under the lime-light artistic in the highest sense, but the 
tresses and the drapery were most skillfully arranged to 
look like the work of the chisel. It is significant of the 
measure of Miss Anderson's art, that in her animated 
moments subsequently she should not have excelled the 
plastic grace of this first picture. At the same time, to 
her credit it must be said, that she never fell much be- 
low it. Her movements on the stage, her management of 
her drapery, her attitudes were full of classic beauty. Act- 
resses there have been who have given us much more than 
this statuesque posing, who have transformed Galatea into 
a woman of flesh and blood, animated by true womanly 
love for Pygmalion as the first man on whom her eyes 
alight. Sentiment of this kind, whether intended by the 
author or not, would scarcely harmonize with the satir- 
ical spirit of the play, and the innocent prattle which Miss 
Anderson gives us in place of it meets sufficiently well 
the requirements of the case dramatically, leaving the 
spectator free to derive pleasure from his sense of the 
beautiful, here so strikingly appealed to, from the occa- 
sionally audacious turns of the dialogue in relation to social 
questions, from the disconcerted airs of Pygmalion at the 
contemplation of his own handiwork, and from the real 
womanly jealousy of Cynisca." 

The Graphic, 14th December, 1883. 
" Never, perhaps, have the playgoing public been so 
much at variance with the critics as in the case of the 
young American actress now performing at the Lyceum 
Theater. There is no denying the fact that Miss Ander- 
son is, to use a popular expression, 'the rage;' but it is 
equally certain that she owes this position in very slight 
degree to the published accounts of her acting. From 
the first she has been received, with few exceptions, only 
in a coldly critical spirit; and yet her reputation has gone 



MARY ANDERSON, 65 

on gathering in strength till now, the Lyceum is crowded 
nightly with fashionable folk whose carriages block the 
way; and those who would secure places to witness her 
performances are met at the box offices with the informa- 
tion that all the seats have been taken long in advance. 
How are we to account for the fact that this young lady 
who came but the other clay among us. a stranger, even 
her name being scarcely known, and who still refrains 
from those 'bold advertisements,' which in the case of so 
many other managers and performers usurp the functions 
of the trumpet of fame, has made her way in a few short 
months only to the very highest place in the estimation 
of our playgoing public? We can see no possible ex- 
planation save the simple one that her acting affords 
pleasure in a high degree; for those who insinuate that 
her beauty alone is the attraction may easily be answered, 
by reference to numerous actresses of unquestionable per- 
sonal attractions who have failed to arouse anything ap- 
proaching to the same degree of interest. As regards the 
unfavorable critics, we are inclined to think that they 
have been unable to shake off the associations of the 
essentially artificial characters — Parthenia and Pauline— • 
in which Miss Anderson has unfortunately chosen to 
appear. Further complaints of artificiality and coldness 
have, it is true, been put forth a propos of her first ap- 
pearance on Saturday evening in Mr. Gilbert's beautiful 
mythological comedy of ' Pygmalion and Galatea;' but 
protests are beginning to appear in some quarters, and we 
are much mistaken if this graceful and accomplished act- 
ress is not destined yet to win the favor of her censors. 
The statuesque beauty of her appearance and the classic 
grace of all her movements and attitudes, as the Greek 
statue suddenly endowed with life, have received general 
recognition; but not less remarkable were the simplicity, 
the tenderness, and, on due occasion, the passionate im- 
pulse of her acting, though the impersonation is no 
doubt in the chastened classical vein. It is difficult to 



66 MARY ANDERSON. 

imagine how a realization of Mr. Gilbert's conception 
could be made more perfect." 

Tfie World, 12th December, 1883. 
"The revival of ' Pygmalion and Galatea' at the Ly- 
ceum on Saturday last, with Miss Mary Anderson in the 
part of the animated statue, excited considerable interest 
and drew together a large and enthusiastic audience. 
Without attempting any comparison between Mrs. Ken- 
dal and the young American actress, it may at once be 
stated, that the latter gave an interesting and original 
rendering of Galatea. As the velvet curtain drawn 
aside disclosed the snowy statue on its pedestal, in a pose 
of classic beauty, it seemed hard to believe that such 
sculptural forms, the delicate features, the fine arms,, 
the graceful figure, could be of any other material than 
marble. The gradual awakening to life, the joy and 
wonder of the bright young creature, to whom exist- 
ence is still a mystery, were charmingly indicated; and 
when Miss Anderson stepped forward slowly in her soft 
clinging draperies, with her pretty brown hair lightly 
powdered, she satisfied the most fastidiously critical sense 
of beauty, Galatea, as Miss Anderson understands her, 
is statuesque; but Galatea is also a woman, perfect in the 
purity of ideal womanhood. The chief characteristics of 
her nature are innate modesty and refinement, which, 
though, perhaps, not strictly fashionable attributes, are 
appropriate enough in a daughter of the gods. When 
she loves, it is without any airs and graces. She has not 
an atom of self -consciousness; she cannot premeditate; 
she loves because she must, rather than because she will, 
because it is the condition of her life. Some of the naive 
remarks she has to utter, might in clumsy lips seem 
coarse. Miss Anderson delivered them with consum- 
mate grace and innocence, but her fine smile, her bright 
sparkling eye, proved sufficiently, that the innocence 
was not stupidity. The first long speech at the conclu- 
sion of which she kneels to Pygmalion was beautifully 



MARY ANDERSON. 67 

rendered, and elicited a burst of applause, which was re- 
peated at intervals throughout the evening. Her poses 
were always graceful, sometimes strikingly beautiful. 

" Miss Anderson has the true sense of rhythm and the 
clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, 
which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and 
tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon 
the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, 
the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this 
world. She is only not human because she is superior to 
human folly; she cannot understand sin because it is so 
sweet; she asks to be taught a fault; but the womanly 
love and devotion, and unselfishness, are all there, writ in 
clear and uncompromising characters. The first and last 
acts were decidedly the best; in the latter especially Miss 
Anderson touched a true pathetic chord, and fairly elicited 
the pity and sympathy of the audience. With a gentle 
wonder and true dignity she meets the gradual dropping 
away of her illusion, the crumbling of her unreasoning 
faith, the cruel stings when her spiritual nature is misun- 
derstood, and her actions misinterpreted. She is jarred 
by the rough contact of commonplace facts, and ruffled and 
wounded by the strange and cynical indifference to her suf- 
ferings of the man she loves. At last when she can bear no 
more, yet uncomplaining to the last, like a flower broken 
on its stem, shrinking and sensitive, she totters out with one 
loud cry of woe, the expression of her agony. Miss Ander- 
son is a poet, she brings everything to the level of her own 
refined and artistic sensibility, and the result is that while 
she presents us with a picture of ideal womanhood, she 
must appeal of necessity rather to our imaginations than 
to our senses, and may by some persons be considered cold. 
Once or tw T ice she dropped her voice so as to become al- 
most inaudible, and occasionally forced her low tones 
more than was quite agreeable; but whether in speech, in 
gesture, or in delicate suggestive byplay, her performance 
is essentially finished. One or two little actions may be 



68 MARY ANDERSON. 

noted, such as the instinctive recoil of alarmed modesty 
when Pygmalion blames her for saying c things that others 
would reprove/ or her expression of troubled wonder to 
find that it is ' possible to say one thing and mean another/ " 
Daily Telegraph, 10th December, 1883. 
"'Pygmalion and Galatea/ 
"It is the fashion to judge of Miss Anderson outside 
her capacity and competency as an actress. Ungraciously 
enough she is regarded and reviewed as the thing of 
beauty that is a joy forever, and her infatuated admirers 
view her first as a picture, last as an artist. If, then, 
public taste was agitated by the Parthenia who lolled in 
her mother's lap and twisted flower garlands at the feet 
of her noble savage Ingomar; if society fluttered with 
excitement at the sight of the faultless Pauline gazing 
into the fire on the eve of her ill-fated marriage, how 
much more jubilation there will be now that Miss Mary 
Anderson, a lovely woman in studied drapery, stands 
posed at once as a statue, and as a subject for the photo- 
graphic pictures which will flood the town. Unquestion- 
ably Miss Anderson never looked so well as a statue, both 
lifeless and animated, never comported herself with such 
grace, never gave such a perfect embodiment of purity 
and innocence. In marble she was a statue motionless; m 
life she was a statue half warmed. There are those who 
believe, or who try to persuade themselves, that this is all 
Galatea has to do — to appear behind a curtain as a 
'pose plastique/ to make an excellent 'tableau vivantj 
and to wear Greek drapery, as if she had stepped down 
from a niche in the Acropolis. All this Miss Mary An- 
derson does to perfection. She is a living, breathing 
statue. A more beautiful object in its mnocent severity 
the stage has seldom seen. But is this all that Galatea 
has to do? Those who have studied Mr. Gilbert's poem 
will scarcely say so. Galatea descended from her pedestal 
has to become human, and has to reconcile her audience 
to the contradictory position of a woman, who, presum- 



MARY ANDERSON. 69 

ably innocent of the world and its ways, is unconsciously 
cynical and exquisitely pathetic. We grant that it is a 
most difficult part to play. Only an artist can give effect 
to the comedy, or touch the true chord of sentiment that 
underlies the idea of Galatea. But to make Galatea con- 
sistently inhuman, persistently frigid, and monotonously 
spiritual, is, if not absolutely incorrect, at least glaringly 
ineffective. If Galatea does not become a breathing,- liv- 
ing woman when she descends from her pedestal, a woman 
capable of love, a woman with a foreshadowing of pas- 
sion, a woman of tears and tenderness, then the play goes 
for nothing. „ , . . . Miss Anderson reads Galatea in 
a severe fashion. She is a Galatea perfectly formed, 
whose heart has not yet been adjusted. She shrinks from 
humanity. She wants to be classical and severe, and her 
last cry to Pygmalion, instead of being the utterance of a 
tortured soul, is < monotonous and hollow as a ghost's.' 
It is with no desire to be discourteous that we venture 
any comparison between the Galatea of Miss Anderson 
and of Mrs. Kendal. The comparison should only be 
made on the point of reading. Yet surely there can be 
no doubt that Mrs. Kendal's idea of Galatea, while appeal- 
ing to the heart, is more dramatically effective. It illu- 
mines the poem." 

The Times, 28th January, 1884. 
"Lyceum Theater. 
"Those who have suspected that Miss Mary Anderson 
was well advised in clinging to the artificial class of char- 
acter hitherto associated with her engagement at the 
Lyceum — characters, that is to say, making little call 
upon the emotional faculties of their exponent — will not 
be disposed to modify their opinion from her ' creation ' 
of the new part of distinctly higher scope in Mr. Gilbert's 
one act drama, 'Comedy and Tragedy,' produced for the 
first time on Saturday night. Though passing in a single 
scene, this piece furnishes a more crucial test of Miss 
Anderson's powers than -any of her previous assumptions 



70 MARY ANDERSON. 

in this country. Unfortunately it also assigns limits to 
those powers which few actresses of the second or even 
third rank need despair of attaining. Such a piece as 
this,, it will be seen, makes the highest demands upon an 
actress. Tenderly affectionate, and true with her hus- 
band, when she arranges with him the plan upon which 
so much depends: heartless and insouciante in manner 
while she receives her guests; affectedly gay and vivacious 
while her husband's fate is trembling in the balance; 
deeply tragic in her anguish when her fortitude has broken 
down; and finally overcome with joy as her husband 
is restored to her arms; she has to pass and repass, without 
a pause, from one extreme of her art to the other. 
There is probably no actress but Sarah Bernhardt who 
could render all the various phases of this character as 
they should be rendered. There is only one phase of it 
that comes fairly within Miss Anderson's grasp. Of vi- 
vacity there is not a spark in her nature; a heavy-footed 
impassiveness weighs upon all her efforts to be sprightly. 
The refinement, the subtlety, the animation, the ton, of 
an actress of the Comedie Francaise she does not so much 
as suggest. Womanly sympathy, tenderness, and trust, 
those qualities which constitute a far deeper and more 
abiding charm than statuesque beauty, are equally absent 
from an impersonation which in its earlier phases is al- 
most distressingly labored. While the actress is enter- 
taining her guests with improvised comedy, moreover, no 
undercurrent of emotion, no suggestion of suppressed 
anxiety is perceptible. It is not till this double role, 
which demands a degree oi finesse evidently beyond Miss 
Anderson's range, is exchanged for the unaffected ex- 
pression of mental torture that the actress rises to the 
occasion, and here it is pleasing to record, she displayed 
on Saturday night an earnestness and an intensity which 
won her an ungrudging round of applause. Miss Ander- 
son's conception of the character is excellent, it is her 
powers of execution that are defective, and we do not 



2IARV ANDERSON. 71 

omit from these the quality of her voice, which at times 
sinks into a hard and unsympathetic key." 

Morning Post, 28th January, 1884. 
"A change effected in the programme at the Lyceum 
Theater on Saturday night makes Mr. Gilbert responsible 
for the whole entertainment of the evening. His 
fairy comedy i Pygmalion and Galatea/ is now supple- 
mented by a new dramatic study in which, under the 
ambitious title 'Comedy and Tragedy/ he has been at 
special pains to provide Miss Mary Anderson with an 
effective role. This popular young actress has every 
reason to congratulate herself upon the opportunity for 
distinction thus placed in her way, for Mr. Gilbert has 
accomplished his task in a thoroughly workmanlike man- 
ner. In the course of a single act he has demanded from 
the exponent of his principal character the most varied 
histrionic capabilities, for he has asked her to be by turns 
the consummate actress and the unsophisticated woman, 
the gracious hostess and the vindictive enemy, the humor- 
ous reciter and the tragedy queen. Nor has he done this 
merely by inventing plausible excuses for a succession of 
conscious assumptions, such as those of the entertainer 
who appears first in one guise and then in another, that 
he may exhibit his deft versatility. There is a genuine 
dramatic motive for the display by the heroine of ' Comedy 
and Tragedy ' of quickly changing emotions and accom- 
plishments. She acts because circumstances really call 
upon her to act, and not because the showman pulls the 
strings of his puppet as the whim of the moment may 
suggest. The question is, how far Miss Anderson is able 
to realize for us the mental agony and the characteristic 
self-command of such a woman as Clarice in such a state 
as hers. The answer, as given on Saturday by a demon- 
strative audience, was wholly favorable; as it suggests it- 
self to a calmer judgment the kindly verdict must be 
qualified by reservations many and serious. "We may 
admit at once that Miss Anderson deserves all praise for 



72 MARY AN DEES ON. 

her exhibition of earnest force, and for the nervous spirit 
with which she attacks her work. It is a pleasant sur- 
prise to see her depending upon something beyond her 
skill in the art of the tableau vivant. The ring of her 
deep voice may not always be melodious, but at any rate 
it is true, and the burst of passionate entreaty carries with 
it the genuine conviction of distress. What is missing is 
the distinction of bearing that should mark a leading 
member of the famous troupe of players, grace of move- 
ment as distinguished from grace of power, lightening of 
touch in Clarice's comedy, and refinement of expression 
in her tragedy. At present the impersonation is rough 
and almost clumsy whilst, at times, the vigorous elocu- 
tion almost descends to the level of ranting. Many of 
these faults may, however, have been due to Miss Ander- 
son's evident nervousness, and to the whirlwind of ex- 
citement in which she hurried through her task; and we 
shall be quite prepared to find her performance improve 
greatly under less trying conditions." 

The Scotsman, 28th April, 1884. 
" Last night the young American actress, who has, 
during the past few months, acquired such great popular- 
ity in London, made her first appearance before an Edin- 
burgh audience in the same character she chose for her 
Metropolitan debut — that of Parthenia in 'Ingomar.' 
• The piece itself is essentially old-fashioned. It is one of 
. that category of * sentimental dramas ' which were in 
vogue thirty or forty years ago, but are not sufficiently 
complex in their intrigue, or subtle in their analysis of 
emotion, to suit the somewhat cloyed palates of the 
present generation of playgoers. Yet, through two or 
three among the long list of plays of this type, there 
runs like a vein of gold amid the dross, a noble and true 
idea that preserves them from the common fate, and one 
of these few pieces is ' Ingomar.' Its blank verse may be 
stilted, its action often forced and unreal; but the pictures 
it presents of a daughter's devotion, a maiden's purity, a 



MARY ANDERS OK TS 

brave man's love and supreme self-sacrifice, are drawn with 
a breadth and a simplicity of outline that make them at once 
appreciable, and they are pictures upon which few people 
can help looking with pleasure and sympathy. We do 
not say that Miss Anderson could not possibly have 
chosen a better character in which to introduce herself 
to an Edinburgh audience; but certainly it would be 
difficult to conceive a more charming interpretation of 
Parthenia than she gave last night. To personal attrac- 
tions of the highest order she adds a rich and musical 
voice, capable of a wide range of accent and inflection, 
a command of gesture which is abundantly varied, but 
always graceful and — what is, perhaps, of more moment 
to the artist than all else — an unmistakable capacity for 
grasping the essential significance of a character, and 
identifying herself thoroughly with it. Her delineation 
is not only exquisitely picturesque; it leaves behind the 
impression of a thoughtful conception wrought out with 
consistency, and developed with real dramatic power. 
The lighter phases of Parthenia's nature were, as they 
should be, kept generally prominent, but when the de- 
mand came for stronger and tenser emotions the actress 
was always able to respond to it — as for instance in 
Parthenia's defiance of Ingomar, when his love finds its 
first uncouth utterance, in her bitter anguish when she 
thinks he has left her forever, and in her final avowal 
of love and devotion. These are the crucial points in 
the rendering of the part; and- they were so played last 
night by Miss Anderson as to prove that she is equal to 
much more exacting roles. She was excellently supported 
by Mr. Barnes as Ingomar, and fairly well by the repre- 
sentatives of the numerous minor personages who con- 
tribute to the development of the story, without having 
individual interest of their own. Miss Anderson won 
an enthusiastic reception at the hands of a large and dis- 
criminating audience, being called before the curtain at 
the close of each act/' 



7i MARY ANDERSON. 

Glasgow Evening Star, 6th May, 1884. 
"Miss Anderson at the Royalty. 

"No modern actress has created such a furore in this 
country as Miss Anderson. Coming to us from America 
with the reputation of being the foremost exponent of 
histrionic art in that country, it was but natural that her 
advent should be regarded with very critical eyes by 
many who thought that America claimed too much for 
their charming actress. Thus predisposed to find as 
many faults as possible in one who boldly challenged their 
verdict on her own merits alone, it is not surprising that 
Metropolitan critics were almost unanimous in their 
opinion that Miss Anderson, although a clever actress 
and a very beautiful woman, was not by any means a 
great artist. They did not hesitate to say, moreover, 
that much of her success as an actress was due to her 
physical grace and beauty. We have no hesitation in 
stating a directly contrary opinion." 

Glasgow Herald, 6th May, 1884. 
"Miss Anderson at the Eoyalty Theater. 

" Since ' Pygmalion and Galatea' was produced at the 
Haymarket Theater, fully a dozen years ago, when the 
part of Galatea was created by Mrs. Kendal, quite a 
number of actresses have essayed the character. Most of 
them have succeeded in presenting a carefully thought- 
out and intelligently-executed picture; few have been 
able to realize in their intensity, and give adequate em- 
bodiment to, the dreamy utterances of the animated 
statue. It is a character which only consummate skill can 
appropriately represent. The play is indeed a cunningly- 
devised fable; but Galatea is the one central figure on 
which it hangs. Its humor and its satire are so exqui- 
sitely keen that they must needs be delicately wielded. 
That a statue should be vivified and endowed with 
speech and reason is a bold conception, and it requires 
no ordinary artist to depict the emotion of such a myth- 
ical being. For this duty Miss Anderson last night 



MARY ANDERSON. 75 

proved herself more than capable. Her interpretation 
of the part is essentially her own; it differs in some re- 
spects from previous representations of the character, 
and to none of them is it inferior. In her conception 
of the part, the importance of statuesque posing has been 
studied to the minutest detail, and in this respect art 
could not well be linked with greater natural advantages 
than are possessed by Miss Anderson. When, in the 
opening scene, the curtains of the recess in the sculptor's 
studio were thrown back from the statue, a perfect wealth 
of art was displayed in its pose; it seemed indeed to be a 
realization of the author's conception of a figure w T hich all 
but breathes, yet still is only cold, dull stone. From be- 
ginning to end, Miss Anderson's Galatea is a captivating 
study in the highest sphere of histrionic art. There is no 
part of it that can be singled out as better than another. 
It is a compact whole such as only few actresses may hope 
to equal." 

Dublin Evening Mail, 22d March, 1884. 
" Mary^Axdersox at the Gaiety. 
cc Notwithstanding all that photography has dene for 
the last few weeks to familiarize Dublin with Miss Ander- 
son's counterfeit presentment, the original took the Gaiety 
audience last . night by surprise. Her beauty outran ex- 
pectation. It was, moreover, generally different from 
what the camera had suggested. It required an effort to 
recall in the brilliant, mobile, speaking countenance be- 
fore us the classic regularity and harmony of the features 
which we had admired on cardboard. Brilliancy is the 
single word that best sums up the characteristics of Miss 
Anderson's face, figure and movements on the stage. But 
it is a brilliancy that is altogether natural and spontaneous 
— a natural gift, not acquisition; and it is a brilliancy 
which, while it is all alive with intelligence and sympathy, 
is instinct to the core with a virginal sweetness and purity. 
In ' Ingomar ' the heroine comes very early and abruptly 
on the scene before the audience is interested in her 



76 MARY ANDERSON. 

arrival, or lias,, indeed, got rid of the garish realities of 
the street. But Miss Anderson's appearance spoke for 
itself without any aid from the playwright. The house, 
after a moment's hesitation, broke out into sudden and 
quickly-growing applause, which was evidently a tribute 
not to the artist, but to the woman. She understood this 
herself, and evidently enjoyed her triumph with a frank 
and girlish pleasure. She had conquered her audience 
before opening her lips. She is of rather tall stature, a 
figure slight but perfectly modeled, her well-shaped head 
dressed Greek fashion with the simple knot behind, her 
arms, which the Greek costume displayed to the shoulder, 
long, white, and of a roundness seldom attained so early 
in life, her walk and all her attitudes consummately grace- 
ful and expressive. A more general form of disparage- 
ment is that which pretends to account for all Miss Ander- 
son's popularity by her beauty. It is her beauty, these 
people say, not her acting, that draws the crowd. We 
suspect the fact to be that Miss Anderson's uncommon 
beauty is rather a hindrance than a help to the perception 
of her real dramatic merits. People do not easily believe 
that one and the same person can be distinguished in the 
highest degree by different and independent excellences. 
They find it easier to make one of the excellences do duty 
for both. Miss Anderson, it may be admitted, is not a 
Sarah Bernhardt. At the same time we must observe 
that at twenty-three the incomparable Sarah was not the 
consummate artist that she is now, and has been for many 
years. We are not at all inclined to rank Miss Anderson 
as an actress at a lower level than the very high one of 
Miss Helen Fauoit, of whose Antigone she reminded us in 
several passages last night. Miss Faucit was more statu- 
esque in her poses, more classical, and, perhaps, touched 
occasionally a more profoundly pathetic chord. But the 
balance is redeemed by other qualities of Miss Anderson's 
acting, quite apart from all consideration of personal 
beauty. 



MARY ANDERSON. 77 

! " ' Ingomar,' it must be said, is a mere melodrama, and 
as such does not afford the highest test of an actor's ca- 
pacity. The wonder is that Miss Anderson makes so 
much of it. In her hands it was really a stirring and 
very effective play." 

Dublin Daily Express, 28th March, 1884. 
"Miss Anderson as Galatea. 
" Nothing that the sculptor's art could create could be 
more beautiful than the still figure of Galatea, in classic 
pose, with gracefully flowing robes, looking clown from her 
pedestal on the hands that have given her form, and it is 
not too much to say that nothing could be added to render 
more perfect the illusion. The whole pose — her aspect, 
the contour of her head, the exquisite turn of the stately 
throat, the faultless symmetry of shoulder' and arms — 
everything is in keeping with the realization of the most 
perfect, most beautiful, and most illusive figure that has 
ever been witnessed on the stage. Miss Anderson indeed 
is liberally endowed with physical charms, so fascinating 
that we can understand an audience finding it not a little 
difficult to refrain from giving the rein to enthusiasm m 
the presence of this fairest of Galateas. From these re- 
marks, however, it is not intended to be inferred that the 
young American is merely a graceful creature with a 
'pretty face/ Miss Anderson is unquestionably a fine 
actress, and the high position which she now deservedly oc- 
cupies amongst her sister artists, we are inclined to think, 
has been gained perhaps less through her personal attrac- 
tions than by the sterling characteristics of her art. Each 
of her scenes bears the stamp of intelligence of an un- 
common order, and perhaps not the least remarkable feat- 
ure in her portraiture of Galatea is that her effects, one 
and all, are produced without a suspicion of straining. 
Those who were present in the crowded theater last night, 
and saw the actress in the role — said to be her finest — ■ 
had, we are sure, no room to qualify the high reputation 
which preceded the impersonation." 



T8 3IARY ANDERSON. 

CHAPTER IX. 

MARY AKDERSON AS AX ACTRESS. 

The author approaches this, his concluding chapter, 
with some degree of diffidence. Though he has in the 
foregoing pages essayed something like a portrait of a 
very distinguished artist, he is not by profession a dra- 
matic critic. He does not belong to that noble band at 
whose nod the actor is usually supposed to tremble. He 
is not a " first-nighter/' who, by the light of the mid- 
night oil, dips his mighty pen in the ink which is to seal 
on to-morrow's broad-sheet, as he proudly imagines, the 
professional fate of the artists who are submitted for his 
censure or his praise. Not that he is by any moans an 
implicit believer in the verdict of the professional critic. 
An actor who succeeds, should often fail according to the 
recognized canons of dramatic criticism, and the reverse. 
That the beautiful harmony of nature and the eternal fit- 
ness of things dramatic are not always preserved, is due 
to that profannm valgus which sometimes reverses the 
decisions of those dramatic divinities who sit enthroned, 
like the twelve Caesars, in the sacred temple of criticism, 
as the inspired representatives of the press. 

Those who have been at the trouble to read the various 
and conflicting notices of the chief London journals upon 
Mary Anderson's performances — for those of the great 
provincial towns she visited present a singular unanimity 
in her favor — must have found it difficult, if not impossible, 
to decide either on her merits as an artist, or on the true 
place to be assigned to her in the temple of the drama. 
The veriest misogynist among critics was compelled, in 
spite of himself, to confess to the charm of her strange 
beauty. Hers, as all agreed, was the loveliest face and the 
most graceful figure which had appeared on the London 
boards within the memory of a generation. According 
to some she was an accomplished actress, but she lacked 
that divine spark which stamps the true artist. Others 



MARY ANDERSON. M 

attributed her success to nothing but her personal grace 
and beauty; while one critic, bolder than his fellows, 
even went so far as to declare that whether she wore the 
attire of a Grecian maid, -of a fine French lady of a cent- 
ury ago, or of the fabled Galatea, only pretty Miss 
Anderson, of Louisville, Kentucky, peeped out through 
every disguise. Several causes, perhaps, combined to this 
uncertain sound which went forth from the trumpet of 
the dramatic critic. Mary Anderson was an American 
artist, who came here, it is true, with a great American 
reputation; but so had come others before her, some of 
whom had wholly failed to stand the fierce test of the 
London footlights. Then to "damn her with faint 
praise," would not only be a safe course at the outset, but 
the steps to a becoming locus penitenticB would be easy 
and gradual if the Vane should, in spite of the critics, 
veer round to the point of popular favor. One of the 
most distinguished of English journalists lately observed 
in the House of Commons that certain writers in back 
parlors were in the habit of palming off their effusions as 
the voice of the great English public, till that voice made 
itself heard. When the voice of the English theater- 
going public upon Mary Anderson came to make itself 
heard in the crowded and enthusiastic audiences of the 
Lyceum, in the friendship of all that was most cultivated 
and best worth knowing in London society, it failed alto- 
gether to echo the trumpet, we will not say of the back 
parlor critics only, but of some critics distinguished in 
their profession, who can little have anticipated how 
quickly the popular verdict would modify, if not reverse 
their own. 

It may be interesting to quote here some observations 
very much to the point, on the dramatic criticism of the 
day, in an admirable paper read recently by Mrs. Kendal 
before the Social Science Congress. It will hardly be 
denied that there are few artists competent to speak with 
more authority on matters theatrical, or better able to 



eO MARY ANDERSON. 

form a judgment on the true inwardness of that Press 
criticism to which herself and her fellow artists are so 
constantly subject: 

"Existing critics generally rush into extremes,, and 
either over-praise or too cruelly condemn. The public, 
as a matter of course, turn to the newspapers for informa- 
tion, but how can any judgment be formed when either* 
indiscriminate praise or unqualified abuse is given to al- 
most every new piece and to the actors who interpret it? 
Criticism, if it is to be worth anything, should surely 
be criticism, but nowadays the writing of a picturesque 
article, replete with eulogy, or the reverse, seems to be 
the aim of the theatrical reviewer. Of course, the in- 
fluence of the Press upon the stage is very powerful, but 
it will cease to be so if playgoers find that their mentors, 
the critics, are not trustworthy guides. The public 
must, after all, decide the fate of a new play. If it be 
bad, the Englishman of to-day will not declare it is good 
because the newspapers have told him so. He will be 
disappointed, he will be bored, he will tell his friends so, 
and the bad piece will fail to draw audiences. If, on the 
other hand, the play is a good one, which has been con- 
demned by the Press, it will quicken the pulse and stir 
the heart of an audience in spite of adverse criticism. The 
report that it contains the true ring will go about, and 
success must follow. In a word, though the Press can 
do very much to further the interests of the stage, it is 
powerless to kill good work, and cannot galvanize that 
which is invertebrate into life. " 

To determine Mary Anderson's true stage place, and 
to make a fair and impartial criticism of her performances 
is rendered further difficult by the fact, that the English 
stage offers in the last generation scarcely one with whom 
she can be compared, if we except perhaps Helen Faucit. 
Between herself and that great artist, middle-aged play- 
goers seem to find a certain resemblance; but to the 
present generation of playgoers Mary Anderson is an ab- 



MARY ANDERSON. 81 

solutely new revelation on the London boards. Recalling 
the roll of artists who have essayed similar parts for the 
last five and twenty years, w r e can name not one who has 
given as she did what we may best describe as a new 
stage sensation. Never was the pride of a free maiden 
of ancient Greece more nobly expressed than in Parthenia: 
never were the gradual steps from fear and abhorrence to 
love more finely portrayed than in the stages of her rising 
passion for the savage chieftain, whose captive hostage 
she was. Her Pauline was the old patrician beauty of 
France living on the stage, a true woman in spite of the 
selfish veneer of pride and caste with which the traditions 
of the ancient noblesse had covered her; while Galatea 
found in her certainly the most poetic and beautiful repre- 
sentation of that fanciful character, ever seen on any 
stage. This was the verdict of the public who thronged 
the Lyceum to its utmost capacity, during the months of 
the past winter. This was the verdict, too, of the largest 
provincial towns of the kingdom. The critics, some of 
them, were willing to concede to Mary Anderson the pos- 
session of every grace which can adorn a woman, and of 
every qualification which can make an artist attractive, 
with a solitary but fatal reservation — she was devoid of 
genius. But what, indeed, is genius after all? It is the 
magic power to touch unerringly a sympathetic chord in 
the human breast. The novelist, whose characters seem 
to be living; the painter, the figures on whose canvas ap- 
pear to breathe; the actor who, while he treads the stage, 
is forgotten in the character he assumes; all these possess 
it. This was the verdict of the public upon Mary Ander- 
son, and we are fain to believe that— pace the critics — it was 
the true one. Her Clarice was perhaps the least success- 
ful of her impersonations; and given as an afterpiece, it 
taxed unfairly the endurance of an actress, who had 
already been some hours upon the stage. But as a strik- 
ing illustration of the reality of her performance, we 
may mention, that, in the scene where she is supposed by 






MARY AjsBEHSGK 



-I 



her guests to be acting, her fellow actors, who should 
have applauded the tragic outburst which the public 
divine to be real, were so disconcerted by the vehemence 
and seeming reality of her grief and despair, that on the 
first representation of "Comedy and Tragedy "they actu- 
ally forgot their parts, and had to be called to task by the 
author for failing properly to support the star. " No 
man," it is said, "is a hero to his valet de chambre" and 
few indeed are the artists who can make their fellow art- 
ists on the stage forget that the mimic passion which 
convulses them is but consummate art after all. 

Mary Anderson's present Lyceum season will exhibit 
her in characters which will give opportunity for display- 
ing powers of a widely different order to those called forth 
in the last. A new Juliet and a new Lady Macbeth will 
show the capacity she possesses for the true exhibition of 
the tenderest as well as the stormiest passions which can 
agitate the human breast; and she may perhaps appear in 
Cush man's famous role of Meg Merrilies. In all these 
she invites comparison with great impersonators of these 
parts who are familiar to the stage. We will not antici- 
pate the verdict *of the public, but of this much we are 
assured that rarely can Shakespeare's favorite heroine 
have been represented by so much youth, and grace, and 
beauty, and genuine artistic ability combined. Juliet 
was her first part, and has always been, regarded by Mary 
Anderson with the affection due to a first love. But it 
may not be generally known that she imagines her forte 
*to lie rather in the exhibition of the stormier passions, 
and that she succeeds better in parts like Lady Macbeth 
or Meg Merrilies. I remember her once saying to me, as 
she raised her beautiful figure to its full height, and 
stretched her hand to the ceiling, "I am always at my 
best when I am uttering maledictions." Thus far, Mary 
Anderson has shown herself to us in characters which 
must give a very incomplete estimate of her powers. None 
indeed of the parts she assumed were adapted to bring 



MARY ANDERSON. 83 

out the highest qualities of an artist. That she has suc- 
ceeded in inspiring the freshness and glow of life into 
plays, some of which, at least, were supposed to be con- 
signed almost to the limbo of disused stage properties, 
stamps her as possessing genuine histrionic power. She 
has earned distinguished fame all over the Western conti- 
nent. London as well as the great cities of the kingdom 
have hailed her as a Queen of the Stage. Such an experi- 
ence as hers is rare indeed, almost solitary, in its annals. 
A self-trained girl, born quite out of the circle or influence 
of stage associations, she burst, when but sixteen, as a star 
on the theatrical horizon; and if her grace, her youth, her 
beauty, have helped her in the upward flight, they have 
helped alone, and could not have atoned for the want of 
that divine spark, which is the birthright of the artist who 
makes a mark upon his generation and his time. When 
the more recent history of the English-speaking stage 
shall once again be written, we do not doubt that Mary 
Anderson will take her fitting place, side by side with the 
many great artists who have so adorned it in the last half 
century; with Charlotte Oushman, Helen Faucit, and 
Fanny Stirling, who represent its earlier glories; with 
Mrs. Kendal, Mrs. Bancroft, and Ellen Terry, whose 
names are interwoven with the triumphs of later years. 

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325 — Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy and Lodgings........................... 20 

326— Little Dorrit— Part I.. 20 

327— Little Dorrit— Part II 20 

328— The Pickwick Papers— Part I.. 20 

329— The Pickwick Papers— Part II 20 

380— Mystery of Edwin Drood 20 

331— The Uncommercial Traveler 20 

332— Sketches by Boz 20 

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334 — Pictures from Italy and Mud fog Papers 20 

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154 — Beyond Pardon 20 

187— Which Loved Him Best? 10 

191— Lord Lynnes Choice 10 

224 — Diana's Discipline 20 

225 — Prince Charlie's Daughter 10 

229— A Broken Wedding-Ring 10 

244— The Sin of a Lifetime 20 

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248— From Out the Gloom 20 

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18— Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton...... 10 

19 — Daniel Deronda..... ......................... 20 

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43 — Charlotte Temple, by Mrs. Rowson 10 

52— Two Wedding Rings, by Margaret Blount 20 

56— The Curse of Dangerfield , by Elsie Snow 20 

60 — A Quen Amongst Women, and Between Two Sins 20 

6' -Lucile, by Owen Meredith 20 

6^ — Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Jane Porter , 20 

64— Charles Auchester, by E. Berger 20 

67 — Barbara's History, uy Amelia B. Edwards 2$ 

68— Called to Account, by Annie Thomas 20 

78 — A Double Marriage, bv Beatrice Collensie 20 

79— The Went worth Mystery, by Watts Phillips 20 

81 — Plot and Counterplot, Author of ' ' Quadroona " 20 

86— Little Golden 20 

87— Daughters of Eve, by Paul Meritt 20 

91 — A Fatal Wooing, by Laura Jean Libbey 20 

94— Merit Versus Money, by Garnett Marnell 20 

98— Pauline, by the Author of "Leonnette's Secret" 20 

101— Dregs and Froth, by A. H. Wall 20 

108— The Eyrie, and The Mystery of a Young Girl 20 

109— Gabrielle, by Louise McCarthy 20 

122 — Circumstantial Evidence 10 

124— Marjorie's Child 20 

I§5— A Coachman's Love, by Herbert Bernard. »..,.._. ? 

IM—A Bmgm®m Q^m% fej Ida Lki Girard^o ,. S8( . O0B .<., 



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139— Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, by John Saunders 20 

142— The Flirt, by Mrs. Grey 20 

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152 — John Brown's Legs, by Kensvard Philp 20 

153— Berlin Societv, bv Count Paul Vasili 10 

163-Leonine, by the Author of "For Mother's Sake". 20 

166 — The Midshipman, Marmaduke Merry 20 

168— An Old Man's Love, bv Anthony Trollope 10 

180— The Sun Maid, bv Miss Grant 20 

182— Comin' Thro' the Rye, bv Helen B. Mathers........ 20 

183— Nancy, bv Rhoda Broughton 20 

203— The Way of the World, bv David Christie Murray. . . , 20 

204— Wild Oats, by Henry Greviile. 20 

208— Claire and the Forge-Master, bv George Ohnet , 20 

207— The Man She Cared For, bv F." W. Robinson 20 

208— Pretty Miss Neville, by B. M. Croker 20 

209— Fourteen Years With Adelina Patti 10 

210— Sappho, by Alphonse Daudet 10 

213— Cruel as the Grave, bv Genevive Ulmar 20 

228— A Sinless Secret, by " Rita " 10 

231— The Gambler's Wife, by Author of "The Belle of the 

Family," etc 20 

234— Beyond Recall, by Adeline Sergeant 10 

935 — The Parisian Detective, by F. Du Boisgobey 10 

239— Love and Mirage 10 

243— A Sea Change, bv FloraL. Shaw 20 

251— A Story of Three Sisters, by C. Maxwell 20 

257— Tom Brown's School Davs, by Thos. Hughes 20 

261— The Lover's Creed, bv Mrs. Cashel Hoev 20 

264— Memoirs of a Man of the World, by Edmund Yates... 20 

303 — A Terrible Crime, by Emma Garrison Jones 20 

304— Addie's Husband 20 

314—20,000 Leagues under the Seas,.., ,. ?fi 

335- Life and Memoirs of Gen. Grant-. IO 



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The following list of books is handsomely bound in cloth and 
gold, and are for sale by the dealer through whom you receive 
t.iis catalogue. 

SELECT FROM THIS LIST. 

Janet's Repentance, by George Eliot. 

Silas Marner, by George Eliot. 

Felix Holt, the Radical, by George Eliot. 

The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot. 

Brother Jacob, by George Eliot. 

Adam Bede, by George Eliot. 

Romola, by George Eliot. 

Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton, by G. Eliot. 

Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot, 

Middlemarch, by George Eliot. 

Mr. GilnTs Love Story, by George Eliot. 

The Spanish Gypsy, by George Eliot. 

Impressions of Theophrastus Such, by George Eliot. 

The Two Orphans, by D'Ennery. 

Tolande, by William Black. 

Lady Audley's Secret, by Miss Braddon. 

When the Ship Comes Home, by Besant & Rice. 

John Halifax, Gentlemen, by Miss Mulock. 

In Peril of his Life, by Gaboriau. 

The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid. 

Molly Bawn, by the " Duchess." 

Portia, by the " Duchess." 

Kit: a Memory, by James Payn. 

East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood. 

Her Mother's Sin, 

A Princess of Thule, by William Black. 

Phyllis, by the " Duchess." 

David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. 

Very Hard Cash, by Charles Reade. 

Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott. 

Shirley, by Miss Bronte. 

The Last Days of Pompeii, by Bulwer Lytton. 

Charlotte Temple, by Mrs. Rowson. 

Dora Thorne, 

Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens. 

Camille, by Alex. Dumas, Jr. 

The Three Guardsmen, by Alex. Dumas. 

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. 

Romance of a Poor Young Man, by Feuillet. 

Back to the Old Home, by Mary Cecil Hay. 

Twenty Years After, by Alex. Dumas. 

A Queen Amongst Women, and Between Two Sins. 

Madolin's Lover, 

Lucille, by Owen Meredith. 

Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Jane Porter. 



MUNRWB BOUND BOOKS. 

Charles Auchester, by E. Berger. 

A Strange Story, by Bulwer. 

Aurora Floyd, by Miss Braddon. 

"Barbara's History, by Amelia B. Edwards. 

Called to Account, by Annie Thomas. 

Old Myddelton's Money, by Mary Cecil Hay 

Thorns and Orange Blossoms, 

^Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens. 

Cloths, a Novel, by " Ouida.' , 

Christmas Stories, by Charles Dickens. 

The Executor, by Mrs. Alexander. 

Annette, by the Author of " Camille." 

A Sinless Crime, by Geraldine Fleming. 

The Wentworth Mystery, by Watts Phillips. 

Leola Dale's Fortune, by Geraldine Fleming. 

Plot and Counterplot, Author of " Quadroona." 

Fair and False, by Mrs. Dale. 

Bet in Diamonds, by the " Countess." 

"Who was the Heir? by Geraldine Fleming. 

Daughters of Eve, by Paul Meritt. 

The World Between Them, by the " Countess." 

Beauty's Marriage, by Owen 'Marston. 

Only a Girl's Love, by Geraldine Fleming. 

Behind the Silver Veil, by Mrs. Dale. 

A Passion Flower, by the u Countess." 

A Dark Marriage Morn, by Owen Marston. 

Dregs and Froth, by A. H. Wall. 

For Better, For Worse, by Mostyn Durward. 

What Love Will Do, by Annabel Gray. 

Lover and Husband, by Owen Marston. 

The Woman in Red, by G. W. M. Reynolds. 

Sweet as a Rose, by Mostyn Durward. 

Romance of a Black Veil, 

At the World's Mercy, by F. Warden. 

A Dangerous Game, by Ida Linn Girard. 

His Wedded Wife. 

Count of Monte-Cristo, Part I., by Alex. Dumas. 

Count of Monte-Cristo, Part II. , by Alex. Dumas, 

For a Dream's Sake, by Mrs. Herbert Martin. 

Mark Seaworth, by William H. G. Kingston. 

Regimental Legends, by J. S. Winter. 

The Heidenmauer, by J. Fenimore Cooper. 

Susan Drummond, by Mrs. J. H. Riddell. 

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul, by John Saunders, 

Charles O'Malley, Part I., by Charles Lever. 

Charles O'Malley," Part II., by Charles Lever. 

The Flirt, by Mrs. Grey. 

The Minister's Wife, by Mrs. Oliphant. 

A Terrible Temptation, by Charles Reade. 

The New Abelard, by Robert Buchanan. 

The Monastery, by Sir Walter Scott. 

The Abbot, sequel to "Th^e Monastery." 

Leila, by Geo. W. M. Reynolds. 

Karaman, sequel to " Leila." 

The Queen's Book, Victoria, R. I. 

Beyond Pardon, 

The Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue. (Vol. 1.) 

The Wandering Jew, by Eugene Sue. ( Vol. 2.) 

Harry Lorrequer, by Charles Lever. 

It is Never too Late to Mend, by Charles Read©, 



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The Mysteries of Parts, & t jugene Sue. (Vol 1) 

The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue. ( Vol. £.} 

Tom Burke, of.'* Ours," by C. Lever. (Vol 1.) 

Tom Burke, of " Ours," by C. Lever. ( Vol 2.) 

Foul Play, by Charles Reade. 

Put Yourself in His Place, by Charles Reade. 

Not Like Other Girls, by Rosa Nouchette Carey. 

The Midshipman, Marmaduke Merry. 

Jack's Courtship, by W. Clark Russell. 

An Old Man's Love, by Anthony Trollope. 

The Octoroon, by Miss M. E. Braddon. 

John Bull and His Island, by Max O'Rell. 

" Airy Fairy Lilian, " by the author of " Phyllis 

The Clique of Gold, by Emile Gaboriau. 

Beauty's Daughters, by the " Duchess." 

For Her Dear Sake, by Mary Cecil Hay. 

Vixen, by Miss M. E. Braddon. 

The New Magdalen, by Wilkie Collins. 

White Wings. A Yachting Romance. 

The Arundel Motto, by Mary Cecil Hay. 

Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens. 

The Sun Maid, by Miss Grant. 

Maid, Wife or Widow? by Mrs. Alexander. 

Comin' Thro' the Rye, by* Helen B. Mathers. 

Nancy, by Rhoda Broughton. 

Hidden Perils, by Mary Cecil Hay. 

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. 

The Wooing O't, by Mrs. Alexander. 

Which Loved Him Best? 

A Sailor's Sweetheart, by W. Clark Russell, 

Friendship, by " Ouida." 

Griffith Gaunt, by Charles Reade. 

Lord Lynne's Choice, 

Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 

Barbara; or, Splendid Misery, by Miss BraddoB, 

My First Offer, by Mary Cecil Hay. 

Which Shall it Be? by Mrs. Alexander. 

Pascarel, by " Ouida." 

The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins. 

A Woman-Hater, by Charles Reade. 

A Little Pilgrim, by Mrs. Oliphant. 

Signa, by '* Ouida." 

Readiana, by Charles Reade. 

The Way of the World, by David Christie Murray, 

Agnes Sorel, by G. P. R. James. 

The Man She Cared For, by F. W. Robinson. 

Pretty Miss Neville, by B. M. Croker. 

Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. 

Called Back, by Hugh Conway. 



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" 43. Charlotte Temple. By Miss Rowson 

" 44. Dora Thorne. By Bertha M. Clay 

44 45. Old Curiosity Shop. By Charles Dickens 

" 46. Camille. By Alex. Dumas, Jr 

44 47. The Three Guardsmen. By Alex. Dumas 

44 48. Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte 

44 49. Romance of a Poor Young Man. By Feuillet. . 
44 50. Back to the Old Home. By Mary Cecil Hay. 



.10 
.20 
.20 
.10 
.20 
20 
.10 
.10 



MRS. ALEX. MCVEIGH MILLER'S WORKS. 

1. A Dreadful Temptation 20 Cents- 

• 2. The Bride of the Tomb 20 

44 3. An Old Man's Darling 20 

44 4. Queenie's Terrible Secret 20 

44 5. Jaquelina „20 

44 6. Little Golden's Daughter 20 

44 7. The Rose and the Lily 20 

44 8. Countess Vera 20 

44 9. Bonnie Dora.. 20 

" 10. Guy Kenmore's Wife 20 

GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. 

44 11. Janet's Repentance 10 

84 12. Silas Marner 10 

44 13. FeUx Holt, the Radical 20 

11 4. The Mill on the Floss 20 

" 15. Brother Jacob 10 

44 16. AdamBede 20 

44 17. Romola 20 

44 18. Sad Fortunes of Rev. Amos Barton. 10 

44 19. Daniel Deronda 20 

44 20. Middlemarch 20 

44 21. Mr. Gilnl'sLove Story 10 

44 22. The Spanish Gypsy 20 

44 23. Impressions or Theophrastus Such 10 

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS 

44 24. The Two Orphans. By D'Ennery 10 

64 25. Yolande. By William Black 20 

44 26. Lady Audley's Secret. By Miss Braddon 20 

44 27. When the Ship Comes Home. By Besant & Rice 10 

44 28. John Halifax, Gentleman. By Miss Mulock 20 

44 29. In Peril of his Life By Gaboriau 20 

44 30. The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid 10 

44 31. Molly Bawn. By the Duchess 20 

44 32. Portia. By the Duchess 20 

44 33. Kit: a Memory. By James Payne 20 

44 34. East Lvnne. By Mrs. Henry Wood .20 

44 35. Her Mother's Sin. By Bertha M. Clay 10 

44 36. A Princess of Thule. By William Black 20 

44 37. Phyllis. By the Duchess 20 

44 38. David CoDoerfleld. By Charles Dickens 20 

44 39. Very Hard Cash. By Charles Reade 20 

40. Ivanhoe. By Sir Walter Scott 20 

41. Shirley. By Miss Bronte 20 

42. The Last Days of Pompeii. By Bulwer Lytton 20 



1 51. Maggie; or, the Loom Girl of Lowell. By William Mason Turner, M. D.20 " 

1 52. Two Wedding Rings. By Margaret Blount 20 " 

• 4 53. Led Astray. By Helen M. Lewis 20 4 ' 

" 54. A Woman's Atonement. By Adah M. Howard -20 " 

" 55. False. By Geraldine Fleming 20 

44 56. Tht Curse of Dangerfield. By Elsie Snow... 20 " 

44 57. Ten Years of His Life. By Eva Evergreen 20 " 

44 58. A Woman's Fault. By Evelyn Gray 20 *' 

44 59. Twenty Years After. By Alex. Dumas 20 " 

44 60. A Queen Amongst Women and Between Two Sins. By Bertha M. Clay .20 *' 

44 61. Madolin'c-over. By Bertha M. Clay 20 " 

'* 62. Thaddeus of Warsaw. By Jane Porter 20 

44 63. Lucile. By Owen Meredith 20 " 

44 64. Charles Auchester. Bv E. Berger 20 " 

44 65. A Strange Story. Bv Bulwer... 20 " 

44 66. Aurora Flovd. By Miss Braddon 2tf " 

"67. Barbara's Historv. By Amelia B. Edwards 20 4 * 

44 68. Called to Account. By Annie Thomas 20 

** 69. Old Mvddleton's Money. By Mary Cecil Hay 20 " 

44 70, Thorns and Orange Blossoms. By Bertha M. Clay. Complete 10 44 

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